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11
Measles.—It will be seen from the foregoing Table that this
disease was exceptionally prevalent during the year. It is a disorder
very difficult to combat in the way of prevention, owing to the
infectious condition of the sufferer in the early stage of the disease,
when he appears to be merely attacked with catarrh. One is naturally
loth to interfere with educational continuity, but, in view of the fact
that very frequently the disease itself, by becoming rapidly epidemic,
produces this result, it is becoming evident to Health Authorities that
early closure may be advisable, especially in the case of Infants' Departments.
With this object the Infants' Departments of both the Star Lane
and West Silvertown Council Schools were closed for a period of three
weeks (17 school days), the former in February and the latter in
October.
Smallpox.—No case of Smallpox was notified during the year,
and so far as one can judge the Borough was entirely free from this
disease. The Dagenham Smallpox Hospital was, in consequence, not
put into active use. At the end of 1905, however, the agreements
entered into between your Council and the eight other adjoining
Sanitary Authorities, by which the cases of Smallpox occurring in the
districts of the latter Authorities obtained admission to the Dagenham
Hospital, were determined, and your Council found it expedient, in
entering upon fresh agreements, to vary the terms originally drafted in
order to render them more equitable to the County Borough. A draft
of the new form of agreement, which has been agreed to by all the
Authorities concerned in the old arrangement, will be found at the end
of this report.
Scarlatina was more cpidemic last year than during the
previous decade, the disease being nearly three times as prevalent in
1906 as compared with 1903, when the smallest number (660) of cases
of Scarlatina which have occurred in any year since the passing of the