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10
MEDICAL INSPECTION OF SCHOOL CHILDREN.
The Bromley Borough Council as the Education Authority
employ a whole time School Medical Officer. Dr. Charles Price is the
S.M.O. in charge of the inspection of the school children. Two
school nurses are also employed, and minor ailments are treated at the
Clinic at 12, Park Road Defective teeth, defective vision, and the
presence of enlarged tonsils and adenoids are noted and arrangements
made to have the defects relieved by part-time dental and medical
practitioners. The dentist and ansesthetist carry out dental work
in a room at the Wharton Road School, while the ophthalmic surgeon
occupies a room at 12, Park Road, and at the latter place also tonsils
and adenoids are removed by operation under an nnsesthetic. In all
action, apart from the actual inspection, involving alteration of
procedure the S.M.O. and M.O.H. confer together. Contacts with
infection are excluded from school attendance when necessary on the
occurrence of certain infectious diseases, an enquiry card being filled in
and dealt with for each notified case.
Classes are frequently closed with the object of preventing second
crops of measles on discovery of a primary case which has already
sown a first crop in school. A measles enquiry card is filled up giving,
among other information, day of rash, last date at school, class
attending, medical aid or not. These cards are filled up by the
Health Visitor when visiting cases brought to notice.
Closure of classes in infants' or junior departments took place on
ten different occasions for a few days to check the spread of measles.
Children below the age of compulsory school attendance were also
excluded at the end of May from both the Raglan Road and Widmore
Schools. Bromley National Girls' School was also closed for a few
days in February to check influenza.
The School Medical Officer is often consulted in such matters and
co-operates also in connection with diphtheria contacts, swabbing
throats and noses, and has sent 109 diphtheria swabs out of a total of
419 from this district to be bacteriologically examined.