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New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 897, 12 October 1956, Page 5

Sir-If, as Dr. Turbott states, New Zealand doctors’ are in favour of the polio vaccination campaign, then they differ from the majority of doctors in England who are strongly opposed to mass vaccination. Also, a panel of doctors recently advised the West German Government against mass vaccination because they believe vaccinated children become carriers of the disease. The English doctors’ view is that the Ministry of Health is premature in launching a vaccination programme, that there has not been time for the vaccine to be proved either safe or effective, and that mass vaccination is a gross waste of public monies since so many already naturally immunised or unsusceptible people have to be inoculated to prevent one fatal or paralytic case. (McHammon, Br. Med. Jrnl. 13/3/54, gives the figures 11,000 for 1 in an epidemic area and about 50,000 for 1 in a non-epidemic area.) As far as W.H.O. sponsorship of polio vaccination is concerned, the right hand of this organisation apparently does not know what the left hand is doing. In every talk I have listened to on the advisability of having children vaccin-

ated, the statement has been made (it was also made by the M.O.H. on the panel previously mentioned) that immunisation has almost banished diphtheria from our midst; therefore one can expect the Salk vaccine to do the same for polio. Recently, however, Dr. Pascua, Chief Statistician to W.H.O., stated that immunisation could not be counted a major factor in the control of diphtheria because the disease has diminished equally in countries where immunisation is not practised!

MARY I.

STROOBANT

(Auckland).

(This letter was shown to Dr. Turbott, who replied as follows: ‘The correspondent’s information does not tally with that which we have received. Immunisation has been potent in controlling diphtheria. During the last war Great Britain immunised very thoroughly against diphtheria. Hungary protected itself with a regularly pursued and widely accepted immunisation campaign. Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland did not bother about immunisatidnm. While the war was on diphtheria flared up in. Germany to the tune of a quarter of a million cases a year. The German armies carried this virulent diphtheria with them and. neighbouring European countries had 150,000 deaths from this cause in the war years. Hungary escaped this European epidemic. So did Great Britain. The other countries between them had 600,000 cases a year. Norway and Sweden started immunisation in 1944, and in both countries cases fell away and epidemics stopped. There is world-wide acceptance nowadays of the = of immunisation against diphtheria.’’-