[Report 1944] / Medical Officer of Health, Chatham Borough.

  • Chatham (Kent, England). Borough Council.
Date:
1944
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1944] / Medical Officer of Health, Chatham Borough. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    15/44 (page 13)
    investigate the causes and origin of it. After all, Scarlet Fever is still notifiable as a single disease yet we know that there are at least twenty-eight different diseases, each giving immunity to itself alone, comprised in this group, whilst the death rate from the whole group is insignificant compared to Gastro-Enteritis. It has been asked What useful purpose would notification serve? ’’ It would suggest: (1) It will allow early and complete investigation of each case. (2) It will give the incidence of the disease. At present we only know of the deaths. (3) We could send a specially trained nurse to help in the home nursing of the case. Owing to the diversity of causes this disease, like Scarlet Fever, is not best nursed in hos- pital unless complete cubicle isolation with highly trained nursing staff is available owing to the dangers of cross infection. The death rate in hospital was over 50 per cent, of cases admitted, though it must be borne in mind that several cases were admitted moribund. Lastly I come to the question of Why should Chatham Infant Mortality and especially from Gastro-Enteritis, be so much higher than the County as a whole? ’’ I regret I cannot give a satisfactory answer. Gastro-Enteritis has appeared in epidemic form in various parts of the country. Glasgow had a bad outbreak and the Medical Officer of Health, Sir Alexander MacGregor, has very kindly sup- plied me with the results of his investigation. These, though of course dealing with much larger numbers, show the same facts as we have, lack of breast feeding and the absence of environmental factors. Chatham was certainly plagued with flies in 1944, possibly due to lack of proper dustbins, but as far as I can judge this applied to most parts of the country. In regard to our immediate neighbours, Gillingham was remark- ably free of Gastro-Enteritis and their infantile death rate will be low; Rochester figures are pretty much the same as Chatham. I have obtained good co-operation from the Midwives in meet- ing the Health Visitors and encouraging breast feeding, but the position in regard to breast feeding is obviously far from satis- factory.