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Food Poisoning
Twenty-three notifications of food poisoning were received during the year.
The organism identified in one of these cases was Shigella Sonnei and in three
the organism identified was Salmonella Typhi-murium. One case notified as
dysentery was subsequently confirmed as food poisoning-Salmonella Typhi-murium.
A complaint was received from a resident that her granddaughter had been
made ill by eating a sandwich of chicken and lettuce in a London cafe. Analysis
of the sandwich, we were informed from the local Medical Officer of Health,
yielded Clostridium Welchii - a food poisoning organism. It was impossible to
persuade the parents of the child to provide faeces specimens for testing, so
no clear follow-up was obtained. The child had recovered quickly from the mild
stomach upset.
A man who worked in Chiswick, but did not live in the Borough, developed
food poisoning after attending a Works party in Marylebone. He was one of over
100 guests affected. The organism responsible for his illness was Salmonella
Typhi-murium. No spread of this infection occurred.
Dysentery
Ten persons were notified as suffering from dysentery, the organism in
seven cases being Shigella Sonnei and in one Shigella Plexner. One case was
subsequently confirmed as food poisoning-Salmonella Typhi-murium.
The tenth case, amoebic dysentery, was notified in November and was a boy
in care at a Children's Hostel in Brentford. The only possible source of infection
was a South Coast Holiday Camp at which the boy had stayed, but although
he had symptoms of gastro-enteritis after attending this camp, amoebae were not
formed until his later attack, by which time the camp had broken up and staff
contacts were impossible to trace. Investigation of contacts at the Children's
Hostel gave negative results, so no spread of infection had occurred.
One case notified as food poisoning was subsequently confirmed as sonne
dysentery.
Influenza
There was a considerable incidence of influenza in the early part of the
year, with complications of bronchitis and pneumonia, causing the hospital
admission rate to rise steeply in the first weeks of January. Five deaths were
attributed to influenza, and the general death rate from respiratory diseases
was slightly greater than in the previous year.
Typhoid Fever
A case of this disease occurred in the Borough in 1959. The patient was
an air hostess just returned from Jamaica and having been before that in China.
Contact tracing was somewhat difficult in this case because of the itinerant
nature of the profession of the patient and her friends, but no second case
occurred.
Tuberculosis
The number of notifications of tuberculosis in 1959 was 73 as compared with
76 in the previous year, the pulmonary cases amounting to 70 and the non-pulmonary
to 3. The number of deaths from this disease was two (the lowest ever
recorded in the Borough) as compared with seven in 1958, four in 1957, six in
1956, seven in 1955 and four in 1954.
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