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The work of the school nurses has included the visitation of 5,319
homes, 1,021 attendances at clinics, and 1,572 school attendances to
assist at medical inspections and for cleanliness surveys.
The nurses also cleaned 17 children and gave 116 baths to 57 patients
suffering from scabies.
INFECTIOUS DISEASES.
Considerable loss of school attendance annually occurs, especially in
the infants' departments, owing to measles, whooping cough, chicken-pox
and mumps, and in order to keep a check upon the incidence of these
conditions in school children, an arrangement exists by which the head
teachers are able to keep the Health Department informed of the weekly
absences due to infectious diseases. The information supplied by the
head teachers includes the names and addresses of the children, thus
enabling the nursing staff to visit the homes. When it is considered
advisable or necessary, a general survey is made of all the scholars
attending particular classes with a view to discovering newly attacked
or missed cases.
The table below gives the numbers of infectious diseases found in
school children during the past three years:—
Notifiable Infections Diseases.
1936.
1937.
1938.
Scarlet Fever
265
179
116
Diphtheria
138
145
136
Typhoid Fever
—
2
—
Erysipelas
4
6
—
Pneumonia
9
22
20
Dysentery
—
10
4
Cerebro-Spinal Meningitis
—
1
—
Poliomyelitis
1
5
—
Tuberculosis
Pulmonary
22
16
6
Non-pulmonary
12
15
9
Totals
451
401
291