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Deaths
Tuberculosis caused the death of 3 male and 1 female local residents.
Prevention
As forecast in 1967 negotiations with the North West Metropolitan
Regional Hospital Board were satisfactorily concluded and each month on
the 2nd and 4th Thursday mornings from 11.00 a.m. to 1.0 p.m., a mobile
mass x-ray unit operates in the playground of the Bridge School, Station
Road, Wealdstone. Here, any person over 14 years of age can attend
without appointment or medical note and without the payment of a fee. In
addition a permanent mass x-ray unit is available at the Central Middlesex
Hospital, Park Royal, N.W.10 and is open from 9.0 a.m. to 5.0 p.m.,
Mondays to Fridays and 9.0 a.m. to 12 midday on Saturdays. The chest
clinics at Station Road, Harrow and Edgware General Hospital, also
provide ready facilities for the examination of all patients referred on
suspicion of some chest trouble by hospital departments and also by their
own doctors.
A vital factor in the control of the disease is the routine examination
and re-examination of contacts, especially family contacts of a known case.
This has been undertaken by the Chest Clinic and here one would like to
record appreciation and grateful thanks to Dr. Grenville-Mathers and Dr.
Trenchard, for their co-operation, help and advice which has been given
so willingly at all times.
The school medical and nursing staff continue to play their part in
controlling this infection and whenever a case is notified whether pupil,
teacher or other member of staff the question of the need for an epidemiological
investigation is discussed with the staff of the appropriate Chest
Clinic.
However, it is pleasing to be able to record that no school child was
reported as having contracted tuberculosis during 1968.
Besides the routine B.C.G. inoculation offered to all 13 year-old
school children, the Chest Clinic have also tested 1,117 contacts of actual
cases and found 532 to be negative reactors. Inoculation was offered
where appropriate and 320 have been vaccinated. All those found to be
positive were investigated by the Chest Clinic.