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97
Chicken Pox
529 intimations of children absent from chicken pox were received
from the schools during the year. Only two schools were really heavily
attacked. The first was Roxeth Manor with 129 cases in the Spring term.
Towards the end of the term Stag Lane was affected; the infection
carried on into the next term and continued throughout that term with a
total of 71 cases. Two other schools had a number of cases in the last
weeks of this term but did not carry over into the next term when the
whole district was almost clear of this infection.
Mumps
Many schools had occasional cases occurring throughout the year,
but only one was heavily attacked. The invasion at Welldon Park School
in the early weeks of the year accounted for 108 of the 152 intimations.
German Measles
Cases of german measles were reported at some time during the
year from nearly all the schools in the district, in all 163 intimations
being received. Although a few of the cases occurred at the time that
other pupils in the school were suffering from the more usual type of
measles, most of the cases occurred when there were no such sufferers at
the school. The vast majority of the cases occurred in the Summer term,
there being only small numbers in the other two terms.
Protection of Susceptible Contacts: Limited supplies of gamma
globulin are available at the Colindale Laboratory for administration to
women exposed to infection in the first four months of pregnancy.
Influenza
Influenza caused the deaths of 9 persons during the year. Most of
these were in the first few weeks of the year and were of persons over
sixty-five years of age.
TUBERCULOSIS
The favourable trend of recent years in regard to tuberculosis
continued, with the result that the numbers of new notifications in the
country as a whole for 1957 was 8% fewer than those in 1956 and the
number of deaths 11% fewer. Compared with the figures of five years
Wore, the fall in deaths from all forms of tuberculosis was 46% and of
notifications 33%.
Notification
Most of the infections which are notifiable have relatively short
incubation periods and sudden onsets. In most instances then it can be
assumed that the infection has been contracted by the individual while
living in the district in which the notification was made. This is not
necessarily the case in tuberculosis. In the first place, the period which
in the case of the other infections is called the incubation period, is so
long and signs and symptoms might be so indefinite that it is often quite
impossible to give an approximate date of the onset of illness. In the
meantime, during this period the individual might have moved from
one district to another and by the time the disease is diagnosable and is
notified, the patient might not be living in the same district as he was
when he in fact developed his illness, and is no longer subjected to the
same conditions which resulted in the breakdown of his resistance. Many
a Primary notification then namely, a notification relating to a patient