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14
Whooping
Cough
It is interesting to record that there were 80 cases of
whooping cough notified during the year. In parts of the North
of England it was reported that a strain of whooping cough
organism which had previously given no trouble was responsible
for an outbreak of the disease. The strain in question was not
incorporated into most of the commercial vaccines available
and the disease had occurred in immunised children. In Redbridge,
an immediate change was made to a vaccine incorporating
the strain in question. Most of the cases in Redbridge
occurred in unimmunised children and it is unlikely that the
organism responsible was the one incriminated in the North
of England.
Whooping Cough is a distressing disease and in young
children can have very serious after effects. In a community
such as Redbridge, with a high protection rate, 80 cases seems
rather high. Unless, the characteristic whoop is present the
diagnosis can never be certain until confirmed by bacteriological
examination.
Dysentery
and Food
Poisoning
314 cases of dysentery and 17 cases of food poisoning
were notified during the year but only in a small proportion were
pathogenic organisms isolated. This might mean that the
organisms had been eliminated by the antibiotics prescribed
by family doctors or that the dysentery was caused by an agent
not detectable by the ordinary methods of bacteriological examination,
such as viruses. It is an undoubted fact that a large
range of viruses can cause diarrhoea but the process of
isolation is so long that the outbreak is usually over before
results are available. In the absence of any effective chemotherapy
the fact of kndwing the name of the virus has no immediate
practical value; although it is useful in the long term in perhaps
detecting a characteristic pattern of virus illness.
In the 17 cases of food poisoning, salmonella was isolated
in only 5 cases. The value of knowing the type of salmonella
is national rather than parochial. By plotting the occurrence
of incidents of salmonella infection the Epidemiological
Research Laboratory at Colindale is often able to trace the
foodstuff carrying the organism. More often than not the source
is imported animal feeding stuffs which infect the animal,
whose contaminated flesh in turn infects humans and other
meat in the same abattoir or retail outlet. A great deal of the
food poisoning in this country is the indirect result of faulty
methods of manufacture of foodstuffs abroad.