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12
SECTION F. — PREVALENCE OF, AND CONTROL OVER,
INFECTIOUS AND OTHER DISEASES.
(Civilians only).
NOTIFIABLE DISEASES.
The table in Section F sets out the number of cases of infectious
diseases notified during 1963.
Measles.
The expected epidemic of Measles occurred during the early part
of the year and a total of 473 cases were notified by general practitioners.
Of these, 10 were severe enough to require admission to
hospital, but all made good recoveries.
Dysentery.
In the Autumn of 1962 there were outbreaks of a mild form of
dysentery due to Shigella sonnei at two primary schools. These outbreaks
threw a great deal of work on the Public Health Inspectors and
were only controlled after a prolonged period. The 73 cases notified
by General Practitioners in 1963 all originated from the outbreaks
which commenced in the previous year.
There is no doubt that the spread of this disease in schools is greatly
influenced by the possibility or otherwise of a strict hand-washing
routine by pupils after using the toilet and before taking a meal.
It happens that the toilet facilities at the two affected schools were
of modern construction, but limited accommodation, and an ungenerous
supply of towels made such a routine extremely difficult to
enforce.
Any future school building should provide for this on a generous
scale and the older schools with toilets entirely divorced from washing
facilities should be replaced on high priority.
Food Poisoning.
Only three cases were notified. These were isolated cases caused by
different organisms and quite unrelated to one another.
It was not possible to discover the source of the infection in any
case and no secondary cases occurred.
Typhoid Fever.
Three unrelated cases of typhoid fever were notified during the
year. One case was that of a woman resident of Teddington who was