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105
increasing amount of immunising work has been carried out in
London and the provinces, and valuable results have been obtained
wherever preventive inoculation has been performed. Within the
past two years the children in a large private boarding school
in this borough have been inoculated, and it is satisfactory to be
able to record that although there have been in past years outbreaks
of diphtheria in this school, not a single case has occurred
since the test and subsequent immunisation was introduced.
In Scotland, so far much greater use has been made of this
preventive method against diphtheria than in this country. As
a means of controlling diphtheria outbreaks in institutions, it has
been employed in Birmingham, Bristol and other places with excellent
results.
I have pointed out in the beginning of this report that it is
amongst the children of pre-school age that the danger of diphtheria
is greatest. It is obvious, therefore, that it is amongst this agegroup
of the community that active immunisation is most essential.
Nor is it necessary, having regard to the fact that over 50 per cent,
of the total mortality from diphtheria occurs amongst this age
group to apply the test preparatory to inoculation with toxinantitoxin.
In at least one London borough this prophylactic
agent has been for the past two years successfully employed at one
of the Maternity and Child Welfare Clinics, and I have had opportunities
of personally seeing the work carried on with highly successful
results at one of the Welfare Clinics. There is no compulsion,
and the parents are invited to use this protective measure for their
children and increasing numbers of them readily avail themselves
of the opportunity.
The same opportunities on even a larger scale exist in Battersea
for introducing this powerful preventive method against Diphtheria,
and I would most earnestly advise the Health Committee to secure
for the children of the Borough the most potent instrument available
for combatting this deadly menace to child life. Diphtheria, as
in past years, has recently been extremely prevalent in Battersea
and other metropolitan boroughs and with disastrous results as the
mortality statistics amongst the younger children show. It seems
surprising, therefore, that as experience of its use on a large scale
in America and other countries has proved that there is at hand a
simple, safe, and certain preventive method for the protection of the
child population of this country, it should have been so slow in being
adopted.
That the Ministry of Health has recognised its value is evident
from a perusal of the Report of the Chief Medical Officer for 1925,
who states:—
"For several years careful observation has been made of
the use of the Schick Test and of immunisation against Diphtheria.
As a result of improvement in material and technique
(the substitution of toxoid-anti-toxin for toxin-anti-toxin) the