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64
MEASLES
This infection is usually most prevalent in the second and third
months of the year. Any very heavy incidence at this time will usually
have been preceded by an undue prevalence in the last weeks of the preceding
year. The 1951 wave had almost passed by the end of the second
quarter, and there was no increased prevalence up to the end of the year.
The low incidence in January of 1952 when only six cases were
notified was followed by the weekly average of 33 cases in February and
the peak weekly average of 46 in March; in one week in March 66 notifications
were received. The figures fell to a weekly average of 10 in April,
and to three in May. Instead of dying out though, the disease continued
to smoulder for the next months with weekly average notifications of
seven in June, 17 in July, 14 in August, to fall to only 10 cases in the
whole of September. The next month saw a marked rise to a weekly
average of nine cases, a rise which continued to 26 in November and 58
in December; in one week in this month 181 notifications were received.
In all, 1,417 cases were notified.
In the main, the disease was mild in character, there being no deaths.
17 patients were admitted to hospital.
Many schools had some pupils attacked sometime during the year,
though those affected in the Spring term escaped in the last. Camrose,
Kenmore Park and Stanburn were the schools most affected in the Spring
term. Aylward, Glebe, Greenhill, Roxeth, Roxeth Manor, Stag Lane
and Vaughan Road were all attacked in the last term.
WHOOPING COUGH
The district was never entirely free from this infection in any part
of 1952, though the incidence was never high. The weekly average of
notifications for the first quarter was nine, the second six, and the third
three. Although the weekly average for the last quarter was 10, this was
the result of an average of three for the first half of the quarter and 19
in the second half. In all, there were 424 notifications.
Seven patients were admitted to hospital. There was one death
during the year from this infection.
Although few schools escaped entirely and in some the infection
persisted throughout the year, none was really heavily attacked.
During the year 301 children were immunised against pertussis for
the first time, 22 by local medical practitioners and 279 at infant welfare
centres. It is probable that the actual number treated by their own
doctors was much more than the 22 learned of.
PUERPERAL PYREXIA
Of the nine notifications of puerperal pyrexia received during the
year, six related to women who had been confined in London hospitals.
One of those delivered at home had had a miscarriage; the rise in
temperature in the other two cases did not appear to be the result of an
infection of the uterine tract.