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SECTION F — INFECTIOUS ILLNESS.
Notification. The following diseases are notifiable in the
Urban District:—
Cholera Acute Primary Pneumonia
Cerebro-Spinal Fever Acute Influenzal Pneumonia
Continued Fever Acute Poliomyelitis
Diphtheria (including Acute Polio-Encephalitis
membranous Croup) Puerperal Pyrexia
Dysentery Relapsing Fever
Enteric Fever (including Scarlet Fever
paratyphoid fevers) Smallpox
Erysipelas Trench Fever
Encephalitis Lethargica Typhus Fever
Food Poisoning Tuberculosis (all forms)
Malaria Whooping Cough
Ophthalmia Neonatorum Measles
Plague
Smallpox. There were no actual cases of smallpox during the
year in the area. There were 8 persons kept under surveillance
for the duration of the unexpired part of their contact period
who had arrived in this country from an infected area abroad.
Enteric Fever. There have been no cases of paratyphoid
or typhoid fever in the area for the past five years. We have been
particularly fortunate in this respect as it is usual to get an
occasional sporadic case from time to time. The last occasion
when that happened was in 1941 when we had two such cases.
Dysentery. There was one case of dysentery notified this
year compared with six last year. Attention has been drawn
before to the fact that only those cases which are ill enough to
call in a Doctor become notified and there are undoubtedly outbreaks
of mild diarrhoea occurring in small groups of the
population caused by organisms of the dysentery group which
escape the attention of the General Practitioners by being either
untreated or self-treated. How far, therefore, the number of
notifications of dysentery can be taken to represent the incidence
of infections by this intestinal group of organisms it is
difficult to say, probably there is no mathematical relationship.
As these outbreaks of gastro-enteritis are usually due to food
contaminated by carriers or sufferers, it is gratifying to note that
there is evidence of awakened interest in the educational side of
this public health problem.
Scarlet Fever. Last year the observation was recorded that
for the past three years, scarlet fever had had a fairly constant
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