[Report 1894] / Medical Officer of Health, Lowestoft Borough and Port.

  • Lowestoft (England). Borough & Port Council.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1894] / Medical Officer of Health, Lowestoft Borough and Port. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    21- small fee, of all specimens of membrane from the throat etc. of doubtful cases of Diphtheria, sent to the Association by me. At the same time I obtained a supply of Antitoxin for the treatment of such cases of Diphtheria as might be admitted to the Borough Sanatorium, but owing to the absence of this disease from the Borough at the latter end of the year, I had no occasion to make use of the remedy. Measles. Only a few cases of this disease have come to our knowledge during the past year, and no deaths are recorded. As pointed out last year, however, owing to the absence of this disease from the town for the past five or six years, the bulk of the school children are susceptible, and we may therefore anticipate an outbreak at any time and should be prepared in some way to meet it. For this reason I advocated the inclusion of Measles in the list of notifiable diseases, as without early information, it is impossible to adequately deal with such outbreaks, but the Sanitary Authority did not see fit to adopt that suggestion. An alternative scheme was however approved, namely that the School Attendance Officer should be paid a small fee for notifying me as to the occurrence of any such cases among school children, and I am thus enabled to obtain the earliest information of any threatened outbreak in connection with any of our Board or Voluntary Schools, and moreover this plan also brings to my knowledge all such cases as are not usually attended by a medical man. As the Schools are the usual medium by which this disease is disseminated, I have every reason to hope that we shall be able to cope with any outbreak that may occur, but have fortunately perhaps had no opportunity as yet of testing the working of this method of notification. I append a copy of the form which has been supplied to the School Attendance Officer for the purpose : To the Medical Officer of Health far the Lowestoft Urban Sanitary A uthority. Sir, I have reason t& believe that_ residing at_ is absent from_School in consequence of an attack of Measles. I understand that (a) (no) medical practitioner is in attendance upon the said child. Dated this day of 189 ] School Attendance Officer.
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