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52
4. Outbreaks of Undiscovered Cause.
Total outbreaks—2. Total cases—3.
5. Single Cases.
Agents identified—7. Unknown cause—6. Total—13.
(5 notified but not confirmed.)
Public Health (Infectious Diseases) Regulations, 1927
Part-compensation continued to be paid (since March, 1938) in
conjunction with an adjoining local authority to a chronic carrier, in
order to prevent her from following her occupation as a cook. The
carrier is now 77 years old and for some years was employed by the
other authority as a convenience attendant. After retirement she
claimed that she was still physically fit and able to work as a cook.
For this reason, part-compensation continues to be paid, since the
carrier condition continued during 1957.
SMALLPOX
About 10 a.m. on Friday, the 5th July, the Medical Officer of
Health, Hackney, telephoned to state that a patient from Walthamstow
had been admitted to a hospital in Hackney in the early hours
of the morning and that a specialist in infectious diseases considered
she was suffering from smallpox. Immediate arrangements were
made to transfer the patient to the smallpox hospital at Dartford.
It was added she was very ill and might not survive the journey.
Shortly afterwards a medical officer of the Ministry of Health
confirmed this information and was invited to Walthamstow to
discuss and consider the position and the action to be taken.
The Department had already been alerted on the 28th June
following a communication from the Chief Medical Officer of the
Ministry of Health that a case of smallpox had occurred in Tottenham
and this information had immediately been circularised to
family doctors in Walthamstow.
Subsequently contacts of the Tottenham cases living in
Walthamstow were notified and eighteen came under supervision.
The Deputy Chief Public Health Inspector was detailed to
make immediate enquiries at the patients home and these revealed
that she had apparently first become ill on Monday, the 1st July,
and that she had visited an old people's meeting at Lloyd Park on
the afternoon of the same day, at the Gospel Hall, Higham Hill, on
the afternoon of Tuesday, the 2nd July, and at the Friends' Hall,
Greenleaf Road, on the afternoon of Wednesday, the 3rd July.
The routine plan of action necessary in such an emergency was
followed and arrangements made to prepare lists of the names and