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Nine of the notified cases were bacteriological cases only, being
children who were found to give positive swabs when examined on the
occurrence of a case of diphtheria in the ward.
One patient was suffering from laryngeal diphtheria.
Two cases occurred in one household.
Of those proved to be diphtheria, 22 per cent. were under five years
of age, 41 per cent. were of school age and 37 per cent. were over 15.
Place of Treatment.
All but seven of the patients were admitted to the Harrow Isolation
Hospital; two were treated at home.
Deaths.
One death occurred from diphtheria during the year. The patient
was a woman of 33 who, being thought to be suffering from tonsillitis,
was admitted to a general hospital. She died on the ninth day of illness.
Immunisation.
5,427 children were immunised during the year, 1,532 being treated
at the infant welfare centres, 2,220 at the public elementary schools and
1,675 by general medical practitioners. Of all the children under five
years of age, 46.1 had been immunised by the end of the year and 69.0
of the children of school age, the corresponding figures at the end of the
previous year being 41.8 and 63.5, and at the end of 1941, 15.6 and 31.5.
The upper income limit which previously excluded those above it
from being treated under the Council's scheme, was removed in February.
From the same date the A.P.T. was issued free of charge to medical
practitioners.
8,747 children were invited to attend for Schick-testing. Of the
4,363 who attended both the test and the reading, 108 were positive, a
percentage of 2.5, the same figure as recorded for the previous year.
Of those who were admitted to hospital from what was considered to
be diphtheria were two who had received the full protective inoculation.
A boy of 7 admitted in February had received 0.1 and 0.3 c.cs A.P.T.
at one month's interval in November, 1941, and was found to be Schicknegative
in February, 1942. The other case was a child of 15 months
admitted in June who in January received 0.2 c.cs and in February 0'5
c.cs A.P.T. He had not been Schick-tested. Both were very mild cases,
one being discharged on the 29th, the other on the 30th day from admission.
A child of three admitted in February had received one dose
of A.P.T. in October, 1942. A boy of eight admitted with a sharp attack
was supposed to have been immunised when he was two years of age.
Provision of Antitoxin.
36 lots were issued, totalling 288,000 units.
Schools and Spread of Infection.
There were no cases this year in which there was any suggestion
that infection had been contracted in school.