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operation on 1st January, 1931, and which have determined the arrangements
for the notification of tuberculosis for the last twenty years.
Notification on Form A was called for from the general medical
practitioner and from the school medical inspector. In addition, medical
officers of Poor Law institutions and sanatoria were required to send each
week a Form 1 notification of persons admitted to, and a Form 2 notification
of persons discharged from the institutions in the previous week.
Each of these notifications was sent to the Medical Officer of Health of
the district in which the patient lived. Each Medical Officer of Health
too, was required to send to the appropriate Medical Officer of Health,
particulars of any patient notified as suffering from tuberculosis who had
removed from the one to the other district. When Forms 1 were received
about patients who had not formerly been notified as suffering from
tuberculosis, it was customary to take steps to try to obtain a Form A
from the doctor under whose care the patient was before he was admitted
to the institution.
The 1930 Regulations have now been revoked by the Public Health
Tuberculosis Regulations, 1952, which came into operation on May 1st.
Under these, weekly notifications are no longer required of patients
admitted to or discharged from hospital on the old forms, though the
Minister has asked hospital authorities and committees to ensure that
this information is sent by the institution concerned to the Medical Officer
of Health of the district to which the patient belongs. Further, it is no
longer necessary for a Medical Officer of Health to send to his colleagues
information about patients who remove from his district. It may be
then, that figures in future will not be strictly comparable with those
received in recent years.