THE BUNDABERG SERUM.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 147, 23 June 1928, Page 8

THE BUNDABERG SERUM.

The parents of the twelve children who died from serum poisoning after a supposed "protective" dose have been awarded £100 for the lc \s of each child, and the inquiry into the actual cause of death is still proceeding. There has been made—by the Health Department concerned—a suggestion that a possible cause of infection of the serum used was the direct handling of the syringe needle by the doctor operating, "who should have used sterile forceps," so it is said. As a matter of fact, it "is customary when affixing a needle to its syringe for the operator to grip the base of the needle between finger and thumb, no part of the doctor's fingers touching the needle itself. This is not really a precaution so much as being the only convenient way in which the needle can be securely adjusted. It has not been stated (by cable) if the top of the scrum bottle was pervious, 01* if it had been removed, and the most minute details should be fully and truthfully stated for the satisfaction of the mourning parents and the unfortunate doctor involved. When the offending bacterium is isolated (if it exists in the serum examined) the mystery will not be solved until the source of the organism and the method of its conveyance to the serum bottlo is definitely proved. Our own Health Department has issued an article of which the following is a portion. "If your child or other member of the family is sick with a sore throat, call your doctor. If it is diphtheria, delav is dangerous. If it looks like diphtheria the doctor will administer antitoxin, take a culture from the patient s throat or nose and isolate the patient. Do not insist on waiting for a culture if the doctor advises antitoxin. The delay may be fatal. There are few diseases where early treatment is so efficacious and so fraught with hope as in diphtheria. There is no disease also in which earlv diagnosis and prompt treatment are more essential. We have at hand a powerful antidote in antitoxin, one of the greatest triumphs of preventive medicine. Were it possible to apply this remedy in sufficient doses and early enough in all cases, mortality from diphtheria would almost vanish. As it is, the disease has been robbed of much of its former terror." You will understand how important to parents is tho inquiry now proceeding into the Bundaberg tragedy, because if that event is altogether exceptional and never likely to happen again much anxiety will be avoided, but if the toxic effects of the serum can easily recur as a consequence of somebody's neglect or carelessness the public will demand that measures be taken to render such an accident impossible—if this can be done. —H.A.Y.