HOME HEALTH GUIDE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 9, Issue 94, 3 July 1946, Page 6

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

DIPHTHERIA

(By the Health Department) In Britain nearly six million children have already been immunised diphtheria. Three million children are left unprotected. This year the Ministry of Health is trying to have the remainder immunised. The work already done is already bringing results. Since the immunisation campaign started, the number of deaths from diphtheria has fallen to one-third of the pre-war average.

In our country parents are not yet convinced of the need for diphtheria protection. At least that is the inference when so few of our children are immunised each year, in spite of the fact that both the Health Department and nearly all private practitioners are anxious to give this protection. In a few areas there is a general wish to have children immunised, but in most places the majority of fathers and mothers are careless or thoughtless about this life-saving procedure. For that is what it is. The English experience is that the immunisation means 30 times less chance of-dying from diphtheria. A clean home, good food and fresh air won’t keep your child safe from diphtheria. It is caused by germs which spread from one child to another and there are always some people in the neighbourhood who are carrying the infection in their noses or throats—healthy carriers. Little children bear the brunt of this disease. More than 8 out of 10 who die from diphtheria are children aged 10 and under, and it is children under 4 years of age who are in the .greater danger from diphtheria. That is why we want every baby protected before its first birthday. Immunisation is a simple way of teaching the body to organise its own natural defences against diphtheria," well ahead of an attack. All that is needed is two, or at the most three, injections of a few drops of protecting material into the skin of the arm. Fathers sometimes stop their children having injections because they themselves have swollen sore arms when given protective innoculations against typhoid or something else when in the armed forces. But diphtheria protection is not like that. Babies and little children may be worried by the skin prick but that is all; it is extremely rare for a young child to have reactions to the injections. Do not hesitate. Have baby protected before the first birthday, and all your younger children too, if they missed out as babies.