Progress report of the Medical Officer of Health to 30th September, 1925 / Urban Sanitary District of the City of Port-of-Spain.

  • Port of Spain (Trinidad and Tobago). Public Health Department.
Date:
1925
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: Progress report of the Medical Officer of Health to 30th September, 1925 / Urban Sanitary District of the City of Port-of-Spain. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    rr FOOD CONTROL. 19. A good deal of supervision is exercised by the sanitary staff on the sale of milk and other articles of food, but there is room for improvement in that direction, especially having regard to the legion of refreshment parlours that have sprung up all over the City since the Shops Hours Order came into force. It is hoped to tighten the control over possible infection from these sources and other classes of shops when the application for power to make bye-laws for the better supervision of places where cooked and uncooked food is sold is granted to the Local Authority. DISINFECTION. 20. Strict attention is given to the disinfection of premises from which cases of enteric fever have been notified, and those which occur in barrack yards, where proper sanitary control is impossible, are invariably removed to the Colonial Hospital for isolation and treatment. PROTECTIVE INOCULATION. 21. Besides all this, the advantages of protective inoculation is persistently urged upon contacts, as a rule with the desired results ; but it is nevertheless to be regretted that there is still in Port-of-Spain a large body of non-immune persons who, from thoughtlessness or prejudice, neglect to avail themselves of this simple means of protection which is at their disposal, free of charge, at the Health Office in Charlotte Street. 22. As protective inoculation may be had for the asking, no one need be infected with enteric fever unless he wants to, and if every non-immune person would get inoculated and see to it that children and others under his charge are similarly protected, enteric fever would soon become a thing of the past in the City ; and it is in the power of every one concerned to bring about this most desirable state of things by the performance of a simple act of good citizenship. OTHER NOTIFIABLE DISEASES. 23. With the decline of enteric fever there has been no unusual prevalence of other notifiable infectious disease except chicken pox of which 27 cases, all of a mild type with no mortality, were notified, as against 8 cases, also without mortality, in the corresponding period of 1924. 24. Tuberculosis.—Pulmonary Tuberculosis also showed a welcome decline, the number of notifications being 135 and the deaths 115, compared with a record of 145 cases and 122 deaths for the same period last year. As usual it is difficult to assess the mortality from this disease which rightly belongs to Port- of-Spain on account of the number of strangers from the country whose deaths are included among those of permanent residents. 25. It is worthy of mention that some of the activities of the Trinidad Association for the Prevention and Treatment of Tuberculosis are usefully co-ordinated with those of the Local Authority in preventing the spread of tuberculous infection. By a mutual understanding the Tuberculosis Nurses report to the Public Health Department for necessary action insanitary conditions observed by them in the course of their domiciliary visits to Dispensary patients, and, reciprocally, the Sanitary Inspectors inform the Nurses of the names and addresses of persons of the poorer class in their respective districts who appear to them to be likely cases of tuberculosis. This arrangement works well and has often hastened the discovery of tuberculous cases and led to the early abatement of nuisances on premises occupied by them.