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105
Food poisoning is notifiable to the Medical Officer of Health under
the provisions of the Food and Drugs Act, 1938.
Under the Leprosy Regulations, 1951, a medical practitioner must
notify the Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry of Health of any case of
leprosy he is attending.
In general, notification is required by the medical attendant and by
the head of the household. In practice it is most exceptional for the
parent to send in a notification. The medical practitioner is required to
notify forthwith on becoming aware that his patient is suffering from the
notifiable condition. This is necessary not so much in the interests of
his patient, because so often no action by the local authority as regards
the patient might be necessary, but so that other steps might be taken
to limit the spread of infection.
Since 1948, when the administration of the isolation hospitals
passed from the local authorities to the Regional Hospital Boards, there
has been a fall in the standard of notification. That there is delay in the
notification of a patient admitted to the local isolation hospital is no
more serious than it was before, as the fact that there was such an
infectious patient is soon learned of from the hospital. But to-day,
a smaller proportion of those suffering from scarlet fever is removed to
hospital which, of course, means that a larger proportion is being nursed
at home so that even with the same standard of notification a bigger
proportion of patients is not learned of as early as might be. But apart
from this, it seems there is more slackness in notification, more cases
being learned of from the returns of the Head Teachers of children absent
from school because of some infection. In some of these cases it would
seem that the case has not been notified for the very good reason that
it had not been decided that a suspicious case was, in fact, a true case of
the infection, though because of the possibility, precautionary measures
were advised; but in numbers of cases there seemed to have been no
good reason for the notification not having been sent in. In these cases
of course, the delay in the Health Department's knowing of the case
prevents the taking of those precautionary measures that might be available
to prevent further spread at the time when they might be most
effective.
The Medical Officer of Health is required to send each week to the
Registrar-General a return of infectious and other notifiable diseases.
A duplicate copy is also sent to the County Medical Officer. When a
patient living in one district is recognised while he is in another district
be suffering from a notifiable disease, there is sometimes the risk of
duplicate notifications. This will occur not so often when the patient
is temporarily staying in that other district as when he is attending a
hospital in that other district, especially when attending as an out-patient,
sometimes the complication arises when he is an in-patient, more
Particularly when the infection which is notified has almost certainly
been contracted before the patient was admitted to hospital. Another
way m which notification figures might be an inaccurate indication of
the incidence of a disease is in the case of such long standing diseases as
tuberculosis. A patient who has been notified in one district moves to
another where he comes under the care of another doctor; that doctor