HEALTH

NEW HAVEN DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH

Vol. XXXVII, No. 6	June, 1920

This article excerpted from p. 4 of the issue.

One weakness of our present method of control of communicable diseases is our inability to properly isolate cases of the various infections. Efforts have been made to enact laws that will make it possible for health officers to establish a strict quarantine and punish adequately those who fail to obey the regulations. Much authority is vested in them in order that their experience and good judgment may enable them to establish proper restrictions and regulations to protect the health of the community. This may be said to be the machinery, but it requires considerable money to make it work effectively.

The most satisfactory method of control is to place all cases of severe infections in an isolation hospital as soon as they are discovered. Your first impression will be that this is the most expensive method, but if results are considered, it appears to be the cheapest. Just as long as our people remain ignorant of the danger to themselves and indifferent to the welfare of others, our quarantine regulations will be violated and hundreds of children needlessly exposed to danger. In the majority of cases we find ourselves unable to obtain sufficient proof to present in the courts that will enable us to punish the offenders. People often complain that neighbors are not conforming to the regulations required, but will refuse to act as a witness against them in court.

In many instances a family has not sufficient room in the flat or tenement to allow proper isolation of any member. These conditions always prevail among the poor where there are large families and where the surroundings are least desirable. As long as we have contagion among the poor we shall be unable to wholly protect the more fortunate members of society, so that it is a matter of concern to all classes. Many parents have taken their children from the public schools and entered them in private institutions in order that they may more effectively safeguard their health.

The public schools, of course, must accept children without regard to the social standing or mental development of their parents and danger will exist in the schools until parents are thoroughly aroused to the need for rigid enforcement of laws that protect the health of the community. Patience and persistent effort will eventually bring this about, but in the meantime if all cases of diphtheria, scarlet fever and typhoid fever were obliged to go to an isolation hospital the danger of infection would be removed from the district by the removal of the case. Contacts could then be kept under observation by the Health Department until safe, and other cases would be discovered and removed before further exposures occurred. It would not be necessary to remove every case to the hospital, but every one so situated as to be a menace to the community should be removed, if considered advisable by the Health Officer. There is at present a fund for such cases, but it is not adequate for our needs and does not permit us to remove to a hospital many that should be so treated for the greater safety of the city's health.

J. G. HENRY, M.D.