Report of the Medical Officer of Health, Cairo City.

  • Egypt. Cairo City Health Inspectorate.
Date:
[1920]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Medical Officer of Health, Cairo City. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    25/106 (page 15)
    all hair is shaved from the body whenever possible. When objections are made to this procedure, washing with petroleum solution is carried out instead. The hair of the head is also thoroughly washed and soaked with the solution. The clothes are disinfected. The whole operation is repeated on the seventh day if considered necessary and the clothes re-disinfected. To do this thoroughly takes so much time and supervision that it has not been found possible to delouse in this way the contacts of all cases. Two of the women engaged in this work contracted the disease. 2,350 Arabic handbills were distributed detailing the best methods of exterminating lice, as a precautionary measure against typhus and relapsing fevers. The Fatwa of the Grand Mufti of Egypt was read in Waqf mosques and posted about in prominent places in the native quarters. This Fatwa explains that typhus and relapsing fevers are contagious and epidemic diseases, that they are communicated from one person to another by means of the louse, and recapitulates the teaching of the Mohammedan religion regarding contagious and epidemic diseases and the duty that is incumbent on ev§ry Muslim to protect himself against them. An outbreak of typhus of some severity took place at the village of Kafr el Gamus, population 1,200, near Matariya, included this year within the circumscription of Cairo. This disease was discovered on March 19, and the last case occurred on June 20. There were 53 cases in all. The village officials strove in every way to conceal the disease and on pleading that removal of cases to the Fever Hospital was the cause, were allowed to have an isolation camp just outside the village. The only response to this concession was the concealment by the Sheikh el Beled and Sheikh of ghajirs of typhus cases in the persons of the sister of one who was aunt of the other and also of the wife of the official telephone operator. These cases were discovered only after death, when concealment was no longer possible. The sanitary barber of the village was dismissed by us and the 'Omda and Mashaiekh dismissed by the Ministry of the Interior. Table XV.—Typhus Fever Case- and Death-rates in Cairo Districts in 1920. District. Population. Number of Cases recorded. Cases recorded per Thousand of Population. Number of Deaths. Death-rate per Thousand of Population. Ratio of Deaths to Cases recorded. Mtisky . 23,900 75 3-138 19 0-794 Per Cent. 25-3 Bab el ShaTiya. 65,000 91 1-400 44 0-676 48-3 Ezbekiya . 'Abdin . 57,700 136 2-357 36 0*623 26*5 61,200 163 2*663 43 0*702 26-4 Saiyeda Zeinab. 72,700 182 2*503 82 1-127 45*0 Khalifa . 5-1,300 117 2*154 54 0-994 46*1 Helwan . 36,041 30 0*832 10 0-277 33*3 Darb el Ahmar. 68,600 172 2-507 106 1 * 545 6C6 Gamaliya. 62,700 82 1-307 54 0-861 65*8 Sluibra . 83,300 140 1-680 41 0-492 29*3 Biilaq. 92,700 149 1*607 84 0*906 56*4 Old Cairo. 32,500 71 2-184 47 1-446 66*2 Wayli. 75,300 198 2-629 85 1-128 42*9 Totals for Cairo. 785,941 1,606 2-043 705 0-897 43-9 Relapsing Fever.—The total number of cases notified during the year was 429, giving a rate of 0-545 cases recorded per thousand of population, whilst the death-rate was 0-029 per thousand of population. The highest case-rate occurred in Saiyeda Zeinab with 0-880, and the lowest in Biilaq with 0-280. The highest death-rate was in Darb el Ahmar, being 0-131 per thousand of population, whilst the highest ratio of deaths to cases was in the Helwan district with 25-0 per cent. See Table XVI and Figure 8.