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11
INFECTIOUS DISEASE.
The year 1925 has been a satisfactory one from the point
of view of incidence of Infectious Disease.
The Council, while recognising that the prevention of all
diseases is a material factor in raising the general standard
of health in the District, is necessarily concerned in the
early diagnosis of many diseases. Such early recognition is
primarily of the greatest importance to the patient, but it is
also of course of importance to those brought in contact
with the sufferer and, therefore, to the public at large.
Arrangements have existed for many years whereby a medical
practitioner can secure assistance for making an early
diagnosis in suspicious or doubtful cases of such diseases as
Diphtheria and Tuberculosis, by having swabs and sputum
examined at the Wandle Valley Isolation Hospital, Beddington
Corner, free of all cost. Special outfits for collecting
such specimens for examination are also provided. Antitoxin
for use in suspected cases of diphtheria or suspicious
throat illness is also provided free of cost to the Medical
Practitioner for his or her use pending the receipt of the
result of the bacteriological examination. It cannot be too
strongly urged that in all cases of throat illness bacteriological
examination of the throat secretions should be made
at the earliest possible moment, and that pending such
examination antitoxin should at once be administered. No
ill result from such administration can occur in cases which
are found on examination afterwards not to be diphtheria.
But the time gained in cases of diphtheria by such early
administration is of the very greatest importance in checking
at its early stages the virulence of this disease.
The earlier diphtheria is diagnosed the better it is for
the patient, so that adequate treatment can be given, isolation
carried out and for the prevention of any extension of this
disease. Extension of the disease means not only risk of
life to those attacked, but it also means increase in cost of
hospital treatment for such cases. One of the largest items in
the treatment of such cases is that of antitoxin, and it is not
unusual for a patient sent in to the Hospital after the disease
is established to cost over £5 for antitoxin alone. It is well
to emphasise the fact that before the employment of antitoxin
the mortality rate was over 40 per cent. of actual