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38
At only one school this year did it seem that any children who
succumbed to an attack of scarlet fever might have contracted the
infection as result of attendance at school. In the first five weeks of the
spring term at Welldon Park School there were 14 cases of scarlet fever
amongst the pupils. In each of the first two weeks there were two cases
in the one class; in the following week there were three cases of members
of one family, but pupils of different classes; in the next week two more
pupils of the first class were again affected; in the last week of multiple
infection two of the sufferers were members of the first class affected
and two attended other classes. A small number of children suffering
from slight abnormalities and who gave suspicious histories were excluded
in the early stages.
SMALLPOX
Although there were no patients in this district suffering from
smallpox during the year the inspectors had many visits to pay to the
homes of those who, in other areas, had possibly been contacts of patients.
The number of children vaccinated for the first time against smallpox
during the year was only 1,193, as against the figure of 2,848 babies
born. 535 persons were re-vaccinated. It is submitted by some—and
quite correctly—that the vaccination of only some of the population
increases the risk of the spread of an infection, once it is introduced,
because the effect of previous vaccination, if not sufficient to avert an
attack, results in a modified form of illness which, being atypical, might
not be recognised as an attack of smallpox, so that infection is spread
from this person. For this reason some do not favour the practice
of wholesale vaccination of infants. But quite apart from the vaccination
of babies, there is the vaccination of those going abroad and the vaccination
of large numbers of the population when it is known that smallpox
has been introduced in any locality, such as Glasgow or Brighton. In
these circumstances consideration of what might be the position if the
entire population were unvaccinated, so that the disease when introduced
would run true to form, must be ignored, and because, in any event,
some of the population is vaccinated, the only sound procedure to avoid
spread is to see that the entire population is protected. The best age
for any member of the public to be protected is in infancy.
ENTERIC FEVER
The exact number of cases of typhoid infection in the district in this
last year is not known. There were two definite cases of paratyphoid B
infection. The first was a boy of eight, an inmate of a children's home;
no others in the home, either staff or pupils, were infected and the source
of this boy's infection could not be discovered. The other definite case
was a child who was a visitor to the district and who had probably been
infected before she came here.
Of the other cases one, a girl of 11, died in hospital. Although the
clinical illness was one of typhoid infection laboratory findings failed to
confirm the diagnosis. The next case came to light because of an infection
in a neighbouring district, due to infected food. The man was one of the