ILLNESS IN SCHOOLS

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26812, 18 August 1952, Page 8

ILLNESS IN SCHOOLS

Criticism Of Health Department

MEDICAL OFFICER’S REPLY

Criticism of the Health Department for not closing schools affected by mumps, measles and chickenpox, is contained in a letter to “The Press” from ‘a correspondent signing herself “Voiceless Vera.” According to the Medical Officer of Health (Dr. D. P. Kennedy) the position is covered by the Health (Infectious and Notifiable Diseases) Regulations, 1948. The correspondent’s letter read as follows:

“Some years ago the Health Department stopped incipient epidemics in the schools by closing affected schools for short periods. The present policy seems to be to allow sickness to spread.* Mumps, measles and chickenpox have decimated school attendances since March. Parents are fed up with the results of these school contacts, and after-effects on some children have been disastrous. Teachers say that their work this term has-been almost impossible. Now the influenza epidemic seems to be starting. If the Health Department has no intention to close the schools for the last week of the term, has the Education Board not thought of doing so?” With mumps, the patient, whether a pupil or a teacher, was excluded from school until the swelling of all involved glands had completely subsided and the patient had returned to normal, said Dr. Kennedy, commentin'g on the* letter. There was no exclusion from school of contacts of either pupils or teachers having that disease. “With measles the patient is excluded for at least seven days from the date of appearance of the rash and until recovery,” he said. “For pupils and teachers exposed to infection (contacts) the period of exclusion in epidemic conditions is nil. In nonepidemic times child contacts are excluded for 14 days from the appearance of the rash on the patient. “With chickenpox the patient is excluded for a period of one week after the appearance of the rash and for contacts there is no exclusion. “This procedure is in line with modern public health practice adopted by the Ministry of Health for England and Wales, the Department of Health for Scotland and the United States Public Health Service.

“So far as the period of communicability of these diseases is concerned, with mumps, the limits are not definitely established, but probably begin at least two days before the development of symptoms and last no longer than the swelling of the salivary gland. An inapparent infection with mumps virus also occurs during which infection may be transmitted to susceptible persons. There are. no applicable preventive control measures other than dealing with the infected person.

“Measles is commicable during the period of catarrhal symptoms—about nine days—from four days before to five days after the appearance of the rash. When the disease is very prevalent in large communities quarantine of exposed susceptible children is impracticable and of no value.

‘The period of communicability in the case of chickenpox is probably not more than one day before or more than six days after the appearance of the first crop of vesicles. It is especially communicable in the early stages of the disease. Quarantine of contacts has no value.”