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A brief study of these figures shows very clearly
that although there is some lessening in incidence in
recent years, for which the voluntary immunisation
scheme operating; in the area since 1929 should be
allowed full credit, there is also an insidious upward
trend in the mortality percentage during the past fifteen
years. It will be seen that the peak of prevalence in
these figures occurred during the last Great War years.
We h ave got to avoid a repetition of this dangerous
infection during the present war. Diphtheria can be
stamped out by immunisation, but the successful
waging of any campaign requires one hundred per cent.
co-operation in the absence of compulsion. Inoculation
in this country is voluntary and the success of our
efforts to stamp out diphtheria can only be measured by
the voluntary response, but, unfortunately, the enemy
has no respect for the conscientious objector to immunisation
who constitutes, in popular parlance, a "fifth
columnist" in the campaign against disease. Every
year some 60,000 children in this country contract
diphtheria, and upwards of 3,000 die from it, and the
tragic side of the story is that practically none of these
deaths need occur.
The work of the Immunisation Clinic for 1940 is
indicated in the following figures:—