[Report 1964] / School Medical Officer of Health, Herefordshire / County of Hereford County Council.

  • Herefordshire (England). County Council.
Date:
1964
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1964] / School Medical Officer of Health, Herefordshire / County of Hereford County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Annual Report of the Principal School Medical Officer Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, I have the honour to present my nineteenth Annual Report on the School Health Service for the year 1964. The form of the School Health Service has remained in principle much the same but as our knowledge has developed so we have been able to expand the various branches of the Service. I would say that Service, as it is run to-day, could usefully be described under the following headings: to see that children with defects get treatment, advising handicapped pupils on special educational treatment, control of infectious disease and health education. To see that children with defects get treatment, we have maintained the routine medical examinations in most of the County ; in one area a year or so ago we submitted a modified scheme of medical examination by selection and we hope that eventually we will be able to see if our modification, on an experimental basis, led to us finding more or less children with defects, at a stage when they would readily respond to treatment. Up to the present, all routine medical examinations have been carried out by members of the medical staff of the County Health Department. For a number of reasons I am hoping to be able to introduce several general medical practitioners to this work during 1965. When these defects are found quite a lot of effort is needed to ensure that the children get the required treatment. We find the parents, general medical practitioners and consultants all co-operate in getting the best treatment for the individual child. We find quite a number of handicapped pupils. A substantial pioportion of such children requne special educational treatment in a special residential school. The largest category is the one for educationally subnormal children—most of the boys aged 11-16 years we send to Pudleston Court and most of the girls we send to Haughton Hall, Shropshire. In this year we have really concentrated on the children who have some loss of hearing. Routine audiometric testing of six year olds has been done in most schools. Where children of whatever age have been referred for speech defect or some hearing loss these also have had audiometric testing. Where loss of hearing was confirmed advice and training has been given to the mother, to help her to understand the problem which faces the child, to help him to cope with the hearing aid, and to assist in the training of her own child. Auditory training equipment is loaned to the mother. We should now co-ordinate the services for the child with some hearing loss ; to do this we require an Audiology Unit and a peripatetic teacher for the deaf. Our ideas on control of infectious diseases have altered a great deal in recent years. Years ago we used to close schools or classes to prevent the spread of infection, but nowadays we only exclude contacts of certain diseases and then only for a very limited period. Home contacts of measles, if under 5 years of age are excluded for 14 days and home contacts of whooping cough, if under 7 years of age are excluded for 21 days. Diphtheria, poliomyelitis and whooping cough have now almost been eliminated due to the high level of immunity obtained from the artificial immunisation procedures. Let us hope that shortly we will have a similar protection against measles. So many school parties are now going away to the Mediterranean for the holidays that I should have thought that steps should be taken to build up the immunity of the children by giving them TAB inoculation in good time before they go. Health education should be more readily used. For some reason whenever health education is mentioned people at once seem to think that sex education is being discussed. We do find that there is a growing desire of most normal school children to want to know more about themselves and how they can remain fit. It is up to us to see that this is met, whether the health education is given by the teachers or by others. I do find an awakening of enthusiasm on all sides for some form of health education. During the year the Hereford Training College have taken a more active part in health education. An interesting scheme was tried out to help children to be ‘ phased in ’ to school life by the head teacher, school doctor and school nurse meeting small groups of parents during the first few weeks of term. This innovation was popular and it is hoped will have helped the more nervous mother to have her fears allayed and so not transmitted to her child.