OCR Text |
Show HEALTH REPORT FOR THE PAST WEEK GIVEN Physicians and state health officers of-ficers reported 334 resident cases of notifiable diseases to the State Department of Health for the week ending March 19, 1948. That number num-ber represents a slight drop over the 354 cases reported last week. ' During the same week last year, 388 cases were reported. Chickenpox leads the list of reportable re-portable diseases again this week, but has dropped from 128 cases for the previous week to 117 cases this week. Influenza shows a slight increase (22 cases) over last week's report. According to reports from the U. S. Public Health Service, influenza has been decreasing for the entire country during the past several weeks. Although the influenza epidemic epi-demic in this state has not been extensive so far, we hope that the peak has been reached and that the number of cases in the state wilL decrease and follow the pattern pat-tern shown for the1 entire country. Thirty-six cases of measles were reported for the week just ended, which brings the total for the year to 229 cases. Although there is no known method of active immunization immuniza-tion against measles such as 'we have for diphtheria, smallpox, and others, the cases may be modified by use of immune globulin if given within several days after exposure to the disease. Cases treated in this way most generally have a much milder infection with fewer, if any, complications and a shorter period of illness when compared with cases in which the immune globulin is not used. As a result of the mild infection following the administration of immune globulin, the cases develop a lasting protection pro-tection against measles. |