London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

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Harrow 1961

[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Harrow]

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103
immunity. The age group selected for treatment was thirteen. B.C.G. is
of no benefit to a child which has been exposed to and has reacted to the
tubercle bacillus. The procedure then is first to tuberculin test the children
to pick out those positive reactors who are not inoculated.

The following is a summary of the work carried out in 1961:—

Type of SchoolNo. of Pupils EligibleNo. of AcceptancesNegative ReactorsPositive Reactors
Secondary Modern1,5471,2021,01691
Secondary Grammar82265156252
Special1613111
Independent72054547440
3,1052,4112,063184

Of the negative reactors. 2,053 were given B.C.G. The acceptance
rate was seventy-eight per cent. The percentage of positive reactors was
8.2, a figure well below the national rate of 15.4.
In his report for the year 1960, the Physician in Charge of the Harrow
Chest Clinic said it has been a routine during the past year for all the domiciliary
contacts of children who arefound to be tuberculin positive during
the school leaving scheme for B.C.G. vaccination to have an x-ray examination.
This scheme has not found many new unknown cases of tuberculosis.
This arrangement of inoculating children of these ages started in this
district in 1957. Each year some seventy per cent of those eligible for
treatment are tested. Up to fifteen per cent react positively so are not
inoculated. A proportion of those tested, for one reason or another do
not attend for reading. This means that some sixty per cent of the school
children of these ages receive B.C.G. Inoculation. The Medical Research
Council trials showed that over a period of some years inoculation might
bring about a reduction of eighty per cent in the incidence of infection of
treated children. The net result is that what is being done in the schools,
bearing in mind that not all parents agree to their children being treated,
and other considerations, should result in a reduction of one-half of the
tubercular infection of children for some years after they have reached the
age of thirteen. To what extent the fall in incidence in this group in this
district can in fact be attributed to this practice is difficult to assess
because, of course, children of these ages have enjoyed the fall in recent
years which people of all ages have experienced.
Ten persons between the ages of fourteen and twenty-four were
notified during the year as suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis which
they presumably contracted while living in this district. Five of them gave
a family history of infection. To these B.C.G. would not have been given.
One had contracted his infection in the services. The other four (or
four-fifths of them) might have been saved from infection had they had