A code of rules for the prevention of infectious & contagious diseases in schools / the Medical Officers of Schools Association.

  • Medical Officers of Schools Association.
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A code of rules for the prevention of infectious & contagious diseases in schools / the Medical Officers of Schools Association. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    but the onus of removing the pupils should rest with the parents, and not with the School Authorities. The latter should rarely go be^'ond advising parents to take away their children. 3. To order a school to be dispersed is a very responsible proceeding, and should not be done unless.the mischief is kept up by some local cause ivhich can be remedied only ivhen the pupils are azvay. Thus, if an outbreak of enteric fever or diphtheria occur, and it is certain that the cause is known and can at once be removed, it will not be necessary to break up the school ; but if, on the other hand, doubt exist as to the origin, or if the cause cannot be immediately remedied or removed, then the school should be dismissed as soon as possible. 4. Similar objections apply, with some reservations, to n^y schools the breaking up of Day Schools. If dispersion be carried out at all, it is probably best undertaken at the very earliest period of the outbreak of an epidemic—after consultation with the Medical Officer of Health, whose knowledge of local conditions will materially aid in arriving at a decision.* 5. If pupils are to be sent home, it is necessary to give It is necessary the parents sufficient time to make the needful arrangements ^° . . ° for isolating for isolating them ; parents should also be informed by the pupils. School Authorities of the period of incubation of the illness ; and whenever possible, the clothes should be disinfected before the pupils leave the school. * The power of a sanitary auth'.rity to enforce the closure of a school is contained in the Code of Regulations of the Education Department, Section 88, which prescribes as one of the general conditions requiring to be fulfilled by a public elementary school in order to obtain an annual Parliamentary grant, that the managers must comply o«« with any notice of the sanitary authority of the district in which the school is situated, requiring them for a specified time, with a view to preventing the spread of disease, either to close the school or to exclude aiiv scholars from attendance, subject to an appeal to the [Education] Department, if the managers consider the notice to be unreasonable.