London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972
View report page
Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
West Ham 1957
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for West Ham]
This page requires JavaScript
Jelly Tests for Tuberculosis. Throughout the year, jelly tests for tuberculosis
have been offered to all children attending for their birthday examinations on their 2nd,
3rd or 4th birthdays. Out of 2,875 children examined, 2,387 were tested of whom 2,385 were
negative. There were thus two pre-school children in whom the result of the. test was
positive. One was found to be negative when retested; the other child is still under
observation at the Chest Clinic and by the Paediatrician, but the source of infection has
not been traced. So far these tests have revealed very few pre-school children who have
acquired tubercular infection, and they have not helped in tracing unknown open cases of
tuberculosis in the community.
As only just over l/3rd of the children invited to the toddlers clinics attend and
in view of the very few positive results, it might be more worth while to postpone testing
until the children are at school, when it would be possible to test a much larger number.
Attendances at the Child Welfare Sessions (including the Toddlers' Clinics) are
set out below for the period 1953 - 1957. The percentage of children under one year and
one to five years who attend does not usually vary greatly from year to year, but it is
interesting to note that this year 92% of the infants under one year of age attended a Child
Welfare Centre on at least one occasion.
This is certainly the highest percentage for many years.
| Children under 1 Year | Children 1-5 Years | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of Individual children | 1953 | 1954 | 1955 | 1956 | 1957 | 1953 | 1954 | 1955 | 1956 | 1957 |
| *2,336 | 2,309 | 2,166 | 2,179 | 2,441 | 5,526 | 5,169 | 5,012 | 4,569 | 4,740 | |
| (81%) | (85%) | (84%) | (85%) | (92%) | (46%) | (47%) | (45%) | (43%) | (44%) | |
| Number of attendances | +25,592 | 25,969 | 23,774 | 23,367 | 25,652 | 13,596 | 11,384 | 10,998 | 11,047 | 10,925 |
| (10.0) | (11.2) | (10.9) | (10.7) | (10.5) | (2.5) | (2.2) | (2.2) | (2.4) | (2.3) | |
Notes:- * Figures shown in brackets indicate the approximate percentage of available
children within the age groups who attended the Clinics.
+ Figures shown in brackets indicate the average number of attendances made by
each child.
Consultant Clinics.
The number of pre-school children referred from child welfare clinics to the
specialist clinics available on local authority premises (through the School Health Service)
during 1957 were as follows:-
Eye Clinic 92
E.N.T. Clinic 5
Audiology Unit 4
Paediatric Clinic 32
In addition, 66 children were referred to consultants in hospital out-patients.
44