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SECTION F — INFECTIOUS ILLNESS.
Notification. During the year two fresh sets of regulations
came into force. The Puerperal Pyrexia Regulations, 1951,
replacing and amending the previous Regulations, came into
operation on the 1st August, 1951. The main need for amendment
has arisen because the present potency of therapeutic,
agents is such that cases of infection were so rapidly being
brought under treatment that they never became notifiable as
it was necessary under the old Regulations for the temperature
to be sustained for 24 hours or recur during that period within
21 days after childbirth. Under the new Regulations any
temperature of 100.4 or more within 14 days of childbirth
becomes notifiable.
The Public Health Leprosy Regulations, 1951, came into
force on the 22nd June, 1951. Leprosy is a rare disease in this
country and it is almost invariably contracted abroad, often in
the service of the Crown. History has created a quite
unjustifiable fear of the degree of infectivity of this disease.
The notification of the disease will serve to bring to the sufferers
now the best possible medical attention and the full benefit of
recent advances in the treatment. Also, although the risk of
spread is negligible in this country it will afford the opportunity
to reduce ttill further even this small risk.
The following diseases are now notifiable in the district:—
Acute Encephalitis Leprosy
(Infective) Malaria
Acute Encephalitis Measles
(Post-Infectious) Meningococcal Infection
Acute Poliomyelitis Ophthalmia Neonatorum
(Paralytic) Plague
Acute Poliomyelitis Pneumonia, Primary
(Non-Paralytic) Pneumonia, Influenzal
Cholera Puerperal Pyrexia
Continued Fever Relapsing Fever
Diphtheria (including Scarlet Fever
membranous Croup) Smallpox
Dysentery Trench Fever
Enteric Fever (including Typhus Fever
paratyphoid fevers) Tuberculosis (all forms)
Erysipelas Whooping Cough
Food Poisoning
Smallpox. There were no cases during the year. There
was one case of chicken pox in which the possibility of smallpox
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