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Infectious Disease.
Measles, Whooping Cough, Chicken Pox and .Mumps
cause a considerable loss of school attendance, especially
in Infant Departments, and in order to keep a check upon
the incidence of these complaints in school children, the
Head Teachers supply the Medical Department with a weekly
list of absences due to infectious diseases. This enables
the nursing staff to visit the homes and give appropriate
advice in each case. When considered necessary, the school
nurse makes a general survey of all the scholars attending
any particular class affected, with a view to discovering
any newly attacked or missed cases. In the case of diphtheria,
swabs are taken from the throats and noses of any suspected
children. If the examinations give a positive result the
children are excluded until either the swabs prove negative
or the diphtheria bacilli are shown to be avirulent.
Diphtheria Immunisation,
Throughout the year the ordinary sessions were held
at the Immunisation Clinics. Every opportunity was taken
of impressing upon the parents the advisability of having
their children immunised against diphtheria as early as
possible.
Much headway has been made in this crusade of
educating the parents to realise the vital necessity of
immunisation, and increasing numbers took advantage of
the facilities offered.
Early in the year an intensive effort was made to
secure the immunisation of as many school children as
possible, and to this end a scheme was put in hand for a mobile
clinic, complete with Calor gas sterilisation plant, to
visit each individual school. A special form of consent was
sent, with the full co-operation of the Head Teacher':
and their staffs, to the parents of all school children,
informing them that one of the School Medical Officers
would attend each school in the near future to carry out
immunisation, and asking for their consent as soon as possible.
The steps taken as outlined above proved to be a
great success, and a large number of children were speedily
inncculated.
In the course of the year 2.739 children were
immunised either at the Special Clinics or at the Schools
themselves.
Bacteriological Examinations„
Examinations of swabs (after culture) are carried out
daily in the Council's Laboratory, and three negative swabs .
for diphtheria are always insisted upon before contacts or
Hospitalised patients are allowed to return to school - thus
minimising the carrier'' population.
Despite this care an unsuspected carrier has caused
an occasional small outbreak of the disease, but the above
measures, together with the increased percentage of immunised
children, have not yet allowed a local epidemic to affect
as many as 20 children (and none of these had been immunised).