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corrected notifications of diphtheria were first kept) notifications had
fallen from over 23,000 in that year to a new low figure of 240
(provisional) for 1953. The Minister expresses the hope that authorities
will plan and sustain the campaign with renewed vigour in their areas
during 1954 and that particular efforts will be made in areas where there
is a low percentage of immunised children under five.
The number of children immunised throughout the country under
local authority arrangements (including those immunised by family
doctors) from the beginning of 1940 to 30 June, 1953 was 10,569,796.
During the first half of 1953, 270,584 children were immunised, of whom
103,123 were under one year of age. The objective of the campaign is
still to secure immunisation of not less than 75 percent of babies before
their first birthday, the objective for 1954 being 498,000 children under
one year. In 1951, only 28 percent of the number of babies reaching
the age of one year were immunised; in 1952 the figure rose to 31 percent
but in the first half of 1953 it improved only to 31.5 percent. The
Minister points out that elimination of diphtheria is conditional upon
the maintenance of an adequate level of immunisation and that if parents
leave their children unprotected there may be a return of diphtheria
outbreaks, as exemplified during a recent outbreak in the Midlands,
where among 78 cases there were 6 deaths, all of them children who
had not been immunised.
Although the provision of an immunisation service for diphtheria,
whooping cough, smallpox or other diseases, is the responsibility of
the London county council, the Lewisham borough council is always
willing to assist the county council in the dissemination of propaganda
and in any other way which will secure the immunisation of the
maximum number of children.
I am indebted to the Divisional Medical Officer of the London county
council for the information on which the following table is based :—
Immunisation against diphtheria ; whooping cough ; smallpox