[Report 1964] / Principal School Medical Officer of Health, Warwickshire County Council.

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

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

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

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    Co-operation and perseverance of both child and parent is essential and it is helpful if the child is old enough to mark up the result chart itself. Some of the difficulties found in the operation of this system are that when more than one child sleeps in a bed (in one case there were eight children in a family and three had to share a bed) all are disturbed and frightened when the alarm rings ; in some cases children switch the alarm off, usually because they are frightened of the buzzer ; other children are very heavy sleepers and do not hear the alarm although the rest of the household is awakened. In large families parents tend not to persevere long enough and this is often understandable when all are awakened by the alarm. The following report was supplied by the Principal School Dental Officer. Once again the increase in the number of whole-time dental officers has continued with the recruitment of two in September and a further two in January 1965 ; the officers recruited are in the younger age groups. Meanwhile one officer resigned last year and another this year. At one time the service was in danger of becoming overweighted with older men, but the balance has now been restored. Just over 26,500 children were inspected in routine visits to schools and 14,200 of these had defects for which treatment was recommended. Many of these children received treatment through the National Health Service, but as only 6,600 attended for treatment in the School Dental Service, it is difficult to believe that all the remaining 7,600 children received the treat¬ ment which they needed. Now that the number of dental officers in some areas is increasing, it will be possible to provide more frequent and regular dental inspections, and check whether treatment previously found necessary has been carried out. Since July 1964 a small quantity of fluoride salt has been added to the City of Bir¬ mingham water supply. Initially the amount was very small, but it is being increased until the content is one part of fluorine in a million parts of water. The City of Birmingham water is supplied to a part of the Meriden Rural District, and a check has been made there of the present degree of damage from dental caries to five year old schoolchildren. This can be compared in subsequent years to see what change is apparent. To safeguard this analysis against changes occurring through other factors, a similar survey is being undertaken in other areas of the County which are not at present receiving any appreciable amount of fluoride in their water supplies. Preliminary calculations on the results of examining five year old children show an average of nearly five out of the twenty teeth in the primary dentition affected by dental caries. A very marked difference is apparent in the state of the teeth between those children in schools in the Kingshurst estate, and those in the Castle Bromwich and Coleshill areas, and a more detailed analysis of the results will be given in the Annual Report of the County Medical Officer of Health. During the year new dental clinics were opened in Weddington, Hillmorton and Leam¬ ington Spa, and a number of older clinics had improvements to the equipment. Other new clinics are under construction or in the planning stage, and it should soon be possible to provide adequate coverage for the whole of the County. The scheme for emploving specially trained Dental Auxiliaries is now in its second year in the County, and the treatment so provided has been very helpful, especially in dealing with the very young patients. The Auxiliaries have also been able to devote some useful time to Dental Health Education in schools. Pulmonary Tuberculosis. Although the number of pulmonary tuberculosis cases in children between five and fourteen is only about a third of that found ten years ago, this disease still remains one of the most serious infectious diseases. Total notifications for the year (covering all ages) remained similar to last year, but in children aged five to fourteen notifications increased, thirteen in 1964 as against three in 1963 and eleven in 1962. Four of these children were direct contacts but the majority were picked up as a result of Heaf testing in schools. B.C.G. is offered to all contacts of a case of open tuberculosis, and during the year one hundred schoolchildren were vaccinated under this scheme. B.C.G. is also offered as a pro-