DIPHTHERIA IMMUNISATION

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 372, 9 August 1946, Page 5

DIPHTHERIA IMMUNISATION

Sir,-The following is taken from the British House of Commons Report, November, 1945: "In the first six months of 1945, 2,000 immunised children developed diphtheria, and 24 died." a How is this reconcilable with the Health Department’s current propaganda, which states: "Immunisation does really protect. ... In the rare instances where the immunised child contracts diphtheria, the disease is mild and nonfatal." The people should realise that it is their own money that is being spent on this stunt: and it is a great pity the neovle were not told the whole truth.

FRED L.

GARLAND

(Auckland),

and

33 others for whose signatures we have no space. (The Health Department, to whom this letter was referred, points out that where large numbers of children are immunised, it is inevitable that a proportion of them will not complete the full course. ‘When cases of diphtheria occur among children who are said to be immunised it is nearly always the case that the children in question have not had the full number of injections recommended. They have in fact not been immunised. Death from diphtheria of a properly immunised child is exceedingly rare. The deaths from diphtheria in Great Britain dropped from about 2,500 in 1941 to about 650 in 1945, and during the same period the death-rate from diphtheria in most European countries greatly increased. The improvement in Great Britain is due to the large amount of immunisation carried out during the war years."’)