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9
required to be notified. Only by complete notification can a true
conception of these important diseases be obtained, and the necessary
steps taken to prevent and deal with them. Every case of infectious
disease is as much as possible, isolated and the contact cases
segregated.
All children from an infected house are excluded from school,
and all public places, until quite free from possible infection, and no
person from an infected house is permitted to return to duty until
free from infection: in the cases of Diphtheria, a bacteriological
verification of freedom from the bacillus is insisted upon. All
contact cases are notified to the Sanitary Districts concerned where
necessary.
There is a reasonable prospect of attaining success in stamping
out these affections or diminishing their frequency of occurrence as is
the case in some infectious diseases.
Every care has been taken to detect "carriers" and in two or
three cases a bacteriological examination of the throat and nose
revealed the presence of the Diphtheria bacillus without there being
any clinical sign of Diphtheria.
The possibility that lice and fleas may convey infectious
disease has been considered as well as all sources of infection.
The number of notification certificates received during the year
was 254, being made up largely by cases of Measles, 84 ; German
Measles ; 28, Chicken Pox, 52 ; and Diphtheria, 31.
The Diphtheria cases occurred mostly in the later months of
the year, and coincident with widely prevailing colds and sore
throats. Scarlet Fever was also most prevalent at the end of the
year, and at the same time there was a great number of cases in the
surrounding Districts.
The following table gives some evidence of the atmospheric
conditions prevailing, but it must be noted that these conditions
affect not the immediate health of the people but a subsequent
period:—