Infective Hepatitis At Burnham, School

Press, Volume C, Issue 29673, 17 November 1961, Page 14

Infective Hepatitis At Burnham, School

An outbreak of infective hepatits has been reported at the Burnham School. Six eases have been notified or are in course of notification to the Christchurch health office, and others are suspected. Two of the notified cases are teachers, and the rest children. Because the Canterbury Education Board was unable to provide relieving teachers at short notice to take the places of those reporting sick, the committee decided to close the school last week for two days (representing four of the six half-days the school had in hand above the legal lower limit for the year). The school is now fullystaffed again with seven teachers, the board having supplied one. while a retired teacher from the district made up the complement The headmaster (Mr W K Wilkinson) said that, to his knowledge, four children as well as the two teachers were being reported as definite cases of infective hepatitis. A fairly large number of other children was also away sick and several of these could well have the disease. He understood that it was cften not possible to be very sure with a diagnosis unless jaundice acsoeared Mr Wilkinson thought the infection might originally have come from Burnham Military Camp Notification The district medical officer of health (Dr. L F Jepson) said the department bad so far only received notifications regarding the teachers and two of the children. The cases were still being investigated. and the inspectors’ reports had yet to come in. Be was grateful to “The Press” for pointing out the common contact of these cases, since the teachers both lived in the eity and until the insoec'ors’ reports had come in there would have been nothing to connect them with the Bumham children He wa« ouite or reared to believe that reoorts of more cases might be on the way as It was often four or five davs before these were received. Doctors usually wanted to be fairly sure of a diagnosis before making a renort The outbreak was typical

of what might happen when one member of a country district caught the disease. Because others in the district had not previously I ten in contact with it, their immunity was low and the virus spread rapidly. He was not going to recommend that the school should be closed, however, unless many more cases were reported. The difficulty with infective hepatitis was that, for every patient diagnosed, 10 to 15 might have an infection so mild that they showed few if any signs of ill-health. He thought the children were probably better at school than in each others’ homes as they would be if the school was closed. Dr. Jepson knew of only one case reported from the camp. The notification had come in two or three weeks ago. Asked whether the recent identification of the infective hepatitis virus might soon make it feasible to detect those mildly infected with the disease. Dr. Jepson said he thought this would eventually be possible, but might take several years. “As far as I know, it is purely a research laboratory project up to now" he said.