View report page

74
SCARLET FEVER
Scarlet fever in this district last year was rather more common than
in the previous year—263 cases against 202. The rate per thousand
population was 1.21. The corresponding rate for the country as a whole
was 0.71. The weekly notification rates over the four quarters were
eight, five, 1.5 and five. The type of infection was very mild. Scarlet fever
today causes very few deaths. The last case contracted in this district
which proved fatal was in 1937.
Very small numbers of patients suffering from scarlet fever are now
removed to hospital. Last year there were only eight.
Scarlet fever today is a mild complaint ; but it is still a communicable
one and, mild as it is, reasonable precautions should still be taken to avoid
the risk of spread to others. Apart from three households where in each
there were two patients who succumbed to attack simultaneously, and who
presumably contracted the infection from some other source and not one
from the other, there were sixteen households in which the infection of
one patient in the home was followed by illness of another. In many of
these instances both children were diagnosed together so that the practice
of not removing scarlet fever patients to hospital did not account for the
secondary infection. In a number of instances though the interval from the
time the first patient was diagnosed to the onset of illness of the secondary
case was sufficiently long that it can be felt in those cases isolation at home
was not satisfactory, and that removal to hospital of the first patient
would have avoided the second child contracting the infection. Two cases
were of special interest in that the secondary cases fell ill only a short
time after the primary case who was being treated at home was considered
to be free from infection. These large numbers of infections in the home
suggest that inadequate precautions are being taken to avoid the spread
of infection. Little harm has perhaps been done, but the risk is always
there of the illness in the secondary case being much more severe than that
of the original case, and the position would be really serious if there were
this carelessness should the type of scarlet fever have reverted to that
which was at one time prevalent.
Because of the congregation in close proximity of children who are
susceptible to infection, attendance at school is one of the means by which
infections of children are spread. Each year in this district there are
groupings of cases of scarlet fever which are suggestive of a child having
contracted the infection because he has been at school. In some cases
there are sharp bursts of a few cases over a short time ; in others there is
the occasional one or two cases occurring in a department each wee^
over a period of some weeks. So very often enquiry shows that the allecte
children, although in the same department, are not in the same class,
and are not closely in contact with the others. It is a long time since a
number of cases of scarlet fever have occured amongst the pupils of the
same class of a school over a short period of time.
In the week ending October 1st two girls each of six years of age,
attending the same class at the Infants' department of Kenmore Park
School, were notified as suffering from scarlet fever. On October 28th