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The Council has an arrangement with the Poplar Borough
Council for the immunisation of children from that Borough at a
charge of 10s. for a complete course of treatment and 2s. 6d. for a
case found to be naturally immune and therefore not requiring
immunising injections.
A few cases were dealt with under this arrangement in 1935.
The following is a report by the Medical Officer in charge of
the Clinic :—-
Report by Dr. F. Porter-Smith.
The attendance at the Diphtheria Prevention Clinic during 1935 has been
the highest since its inception in 1928. This is very gratifying and demonstrates
the general confidence of the parents in this valuable preventative treatment in
spite of the highly organised (but sadly misguided and misinformed) opposition
of a certain Society, which opposes all modern scientific discoveries and their
use to prevent fatal diseases if the treatment is connected with a serum or vaccine.
It is incredible that they should be right and the whole of the scientific world
wrong and it is equally deplorable that they have no alternative help to offer
to combat such a fatal and damaging disease as diphtheria.
As I have mentioned before, statistics are valueless until 50 to 60 per cent,
of the population are protected and it will take many years to arrive at this
figure with such an ever-increasing and moving population as that of London.
But this is no reason why parents should not have available the means to protect
their children if they so wish.
The ' 'Gravis'' or extremely severe type of diphtheria which we experienced
towards the end of 1934 continued into the early part of 1935. It is interesting
to note that this severe epidemic had little or no effect on the protected population
of the Borough. Indeed, since the opening of the Clinic in 1928 there have been
only six cases in which the protection has broken down and these six children
suffered from attacks of diphtheria so mild in character that difficulty was
experienced in establishing the diagnoses.