CHILDREN'S HEALTH.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 143, 18 June 1926, Page 8

CHILDREN'S HEALTH.

SAFEGUARDING MEASURES.- / ISOLATION PERIODS. (15y Telegraph.—Special to "Star.") WELLINGTON, this day. In order to prevent the spread of illness, particularly that of an epidemic nature, among school children, new regulations have been gazetted which lay clown tlie period during which children suffering from infectious disease are to be excluded from schools. In the case of diphtheria, a patient must be absent from school for at least three weeks from the date of onset of the disease and until medically certified that the regulation period of isolation is completed. For scarlet fever and enteric fever, the period is six weeks. For cerebrospinal fever it is four weeks and for infantile paralysis six weeks, but in the bitter case no certificate of isolation i 3 necessary. For measles it is till at least two weeks after the appearance of the rash, and in this case it must be established that the patient is satisfactorily convalescent. Children with mild influenza are to be excluded until the temperature has been normal for at least four days and catarrhal symptoms have disappeared. If complications have been present a medical certificate of recovery and isolation must be supplied. Children suspected of tuberculosis are to be excluded only if there is coushing or expectorating and tubercle bacilli are found in the discharges. Other diseases dealt with are smallpox, German measles, whooping cough, mumps, chicken pox, ringworm and pediculosis. With reference to contacts there is a "eneral provision that where a patient is treated at home the exclusion shall l>e until the isolation period has expired nnd in certain instances till disinfection has been carried out. Where the patient has been removed to hospital from three to seven days must elapse after the disinfection which follows tbe removal.