View report page

Diphtheria
The district continued to enjoy freedom from this disease as it has
done for the previous seven years.
Diphtheria Immunisation.
The immunisation scheme against diphtheria is the responsibility of
the County Council, but as with smallpox vaccination it is, with the agreement
of the District Council directed locally by the District Medical Officer
of Health.
Statistics have been produced which would appear to indicate that
there is some relation between the prophylactic injections given against
diphtheria, whooping cough, etc. and the precipitation of paralysis in a child
suffering from poliomyelitis in the limb in which the injection was given.
Concern for this association has led to certain modifications in the practise
of immunisation. These statistics referred to indicate that what association
there is relates chiefly to the use of alum precipitated preparations especially
those used in combination e.g. diphtheria and whooping cough prophylactics.
Official policy as a result now provides for alum precipitated
preparations to be discontinued, a simple enough matter since alternative
plain suspensions can be used with equal effectiveness. But it also provides
that combined injections shall not be given in the six months April to
September, the time when polio is likely to be more prevalent.
There is a serious risk of attaching too much importance to this
statistical association and thereby unjustifiably prejudicing the benefits of
diphtheria prevention. No case of paralysis in a polio patient arising
within a reasonable time after a prophylactic injection has occurred in this
district although several thousand children have been immunised since
polio became epidemic in 1947.
In the absence of any immediate threat from diphtheria and considering
the added difficulties associated with the new restrictions on immunisation
practise, it is satisfactory that the level of diphtheria immunisation should
have been maintained at so high a figure as 63.5 % the same as a year before.