View report page

74
PREVALENCE OF AND CONTROL OVER
INFECTIOUS AND OTHER DIEASES

CONTROL OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES
The benefits of the improved hygienic conditions which were brought
about towards the end of the last century were reflected in the reduced
incidence of a number of infections which had up to that wrought such
havoc. When the infectious diseases hospitals were erected from 1880
onwards, they were not so much hospitals at which the infectious sick obtained
treatment, as places to which infective persons were removed to avoid their
spreading infection to others. At the time and for many years, the three
diseases from which those removed to these hospitals were suffering were
scarlet fever, diphtheria and enteric fever. All three diseases were very
prevalent and most lethal. From the 1920's sufferers from other infections
have been admitted. This wider range of cases necessitated changes in the
lay-out of these hospitals with many of the beds provided in single-bedded
or four-bedded cubicles. Enteric fever became less common, largely the
result of a safer water supply. Scarlet fever became mild in character even
though so very prevalent at times; and then from the beginning of the
national campaign for immunisation against diphtheria in the early days
of the war, there has been a steady reduction in the number of these cases.
These then so very recently dread diseases now provide very small numbers
of admissions to the isolation hospitals. In the meantime, measles
has waned in severity, quite apart from the efficacy of therapeutic agents
for cutting short the damage due to secondary infection when this occurs.
Concurrently, and perhaps largely due to the increasing amount of
vaccinating of infants against whooping cough, there has been a fall in the
severity of this infection, so recently such a menace to the life and health
of the infant. The importance then of these infections which even in the