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| Contagious diseases |
General Directions : The patient must be isolated in a light airy room, from which all members of the family are excluded except those nursing the patient. The nurses must not come in contact with any other members of the family except when off duty, and then only with the adults. Great care must be used to exclude domestic pets from the room. The temperature of the room should be about 68°
All the dishes used in the sick room by the patient and the nurse must be kept exclusively for them, and must be sterilized before being used by anyone else.
Before going off duty, the nurse must change all her garments, including her shoes, and must scrub her hands in hot water and soap and sterilize them in alcohol. Her hair must also be sterilized in alcohol. A basin of alcohol must be kept near the bed and the hands rinsed after contact with the patient. Thermometers must be sterilized in alcohol.
All the bed linen’s and the patient’s garments must be boiled separately in soap and water for half an hour before going into the general wash.
Chloride of lime may be used for disinfecting the bed pan, syringes, and secretions and excretions of the patient.
At the end of the period of isolation the patient must be given a disinfecting bath, with green soap and hot water, to be followed by sponging with alcohol. The clothing which has been used during the period of isolation must be left behind for disinfection, and fresh clothing put on after the disinfecting bath.
Board of Health Rules : The New York Board of Health requires that scarlet fever and measles be isolated until peeling is complete, and diphtheria until the throat is free from germs. This usually means a period of from three to six weeks.
They also require that the rooms used by the patient be disinfected under their direction. In private houses such disinfection may be done by private companies, but in all cases the bedding must be removed by the board of health and sterilized by them.
Physicians and citizens are required to report contagious diseases to the Board of Health, and inspectors visit such cases as regular intervals. The inspectors are not allowed to examine the patients except at the termination of the disease, in order to learn whether peeling is complete. They are, however, required to inspect the premises to see that isolation is properly carried out.
In case there are other children in the family, they must be excluded from school as soon as a diagnosis is established.
The following diseases are considered by the Board of Health as contagious and must.
Scarlet fever, diphtheria, measles, chicken pox, German measles, whooping cough, cerebro-spinal meningitis.
Tuberculosis, typhoid fever and malaria must also be reported to the Department of Communicable Diseases.