[Report 1909] / Medical Officer of Health, Burnley County Borough.

  • Burnley (England). County Borough Council.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1909] / Medical Officer of Health, Burnley County Borough. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Education Report. Officer of Health he is notified of any notifiable infectious disease outside the school. The Medical Officer can take such precautions as he thinks fit for the protection of the scholars of any or all of the schools, and all this without any loss of time through one department having to communicate with another before any action can be taken. Though the Medical Officer soon becomes aware of the existence of any infectious disease in a school child over five, knowledge of the existence of such disease in a child under that age is more or less a matter of chance, and some arrangement should be made whereby every child on being absent from school for sickness should be visited and the nature of the disease ascertained. Further, no regular proof that a child is safe to mingle with others is required by the teachers on the return to school of a child who has been absent owing to infectious disease. An arrangement can easily be made that every child having been absent owing to any disease must he inspected by the School Medical Officer and certified as safe to return to school before being allowed to do so. By this means it is probable that what are called “ carrier ” cases might be discovered. Carrier cases includes those persons capable of giving a disease to others though not apparently suffering from it. This term perhaps applies to diphtheria and typhoid fever more than any other disease. The first of these two being the most important to a School Medical Officer. If such steps were taken, we might ])ossibly stain]) out from our schools such diseases as diphtheria, ringworm, and impetigo ; at any rate it must leeid to a lessening of the number of sufferers from them.