BUNDABERG TRAGEDY

Evening Star, Issue 19778, 31 January 1928, Page 5

BUNDABERG TRAGEDY

NO FURTHER DEATHS INVESTIGATIONS PROCEEDING Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright BRISBANE, January 30. Every hope is now held out for the recovery of the remaining serum victims at Bundaberg. are not yet out of danger, but uo serious developments are expected, unless unforeseen complications arise. CONFERENCE OF MEDICAL EXPERTS. MELBOURNE, January 30. A conference of the Federal Health Department, under the chairmanship of the Minister (Sir Neville Howse), and at which Dr Cumpston, Federal Direc-tor-General of Health and Director ot the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories, was present, considered the Bundaberg tragedy. Sir Neville Howse stated that it was extremely difficult to understand bow the process, which had been used to treat many hundreds of thousands of children all over the world and many thousands in the Commonwealth without any sign of ill-effects, could be a£tended by such tragic results. He added that preliminary inquiries made it clear that the toxin and antitoxin mixture issued by the department was of good quality, and free trom any dangerous attributes. Tho inoculation of certain children at Bundaberg from the bottle itself without any harm showed that after its arrival at Bundaberg it was still in the same condition, it was clear that something had happened between tho first and last inoculations, and everything would bo done by the authorities to determine what had actually happened. Dr Earle Page has left for Bundaberg to investigate the position. In a statement, ho said that of every 135,000 children born in Australia yearly 500 died of diphtheria before reaching school age, and, though the methods of sanitation and the administration of antitoxin had improved enormously in the last twenty years, and had enabled thousands of children to be saved who previously would have died, the number of deaths trom diphtheria at present was practically as great per 1,000 as it had ever been. General treatment having failed to arrest the disease attempts had been made to secure immunity of the individual by injecting a mixture of toxins and antitoxins.

IMMUNISED BY TOXIN

MANY MILLIONS OF CHILDREN NO HARMFUL EFFECTS, [Per United Press Association.] WELLINGTON, January 31. With regard to the fatalities in Queensland, Dr Watt (Deputy Director of the New* Zealand Health Department) says that many millions of children throughout the world have been immunised by toxin and anti-toxin without harmful effects. It was first used in New Zealand in IDI9, and since 1924 has been given to an increasing number, til! thousands of children are now immunised. No case has occurred where any serious results have been noted, and it is definitely acknowledged that this method is the best preventive against diphtheria.