DIPHTHERIA PROTECTION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26028, 17 December 1945, Page 8

DIPHTHERIA PROTECTION

(Contributed by the Department ol Health)

The United States and later Canada have long since proved that towns can practically free themselves of diphtheria if they have the majority of their children immunised. At least two-thirds of the pre-school population must be protected, with a reinforcing dose on entering primary school before diphtheria can be kept at bay. Now England, which was slow to practise immunisation before the war but which adopted it as a policy during this war, is proving again that this injection business against diphtheria is very much worthwhile. While diphtheria has been epidemic on the nearby Continent of Europe and there has been much coming and going of people to carry infection since D-Day, England has escaped. In France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, where over recent years immunisation work was stopped, diphtheria has been epidemic and serious. In England and Wales, on the other hand, the incidence has fallen to the lowest level ever recorded. From January, 1940, to December, 1943, there were 4,800,000 children under 15 years of age immunised, of which number 1,680,000 were under five years. There were 46,683 cases in 1940, and 29.446 in 1944. The deaths in 1943 were 1370. the smallest number ever recorded, and this was slashed to only 865 in 1944—a remarkable tribute to the skill and efficiency with which the Ministry, of Health, London, has conducted its anti-diphtheria campaign. Not enough pre-school children are being immunised in New Zealand. At six to nine months of age, certainly before the first birthday, babies should be immunised. So should all children at or below six years of age if immunisation was neglected in infancy. To make it last through school life, children given an immunisation treatment during infancy should have a single reinforcing dose on entrance to primary school.