HC Deb 08 June 1943 vol 390 cc558-9W
Mr. Leach

asked the Minister of Health whether his attention has been drawn to the fact that the weekly returns of deaths from diphtheria and cases notified appear not to be affected by the campaign of his Department for immunisation now some years in operation; and will he undertake to reconsider the whole problem and meanwhile suspend the campaign?

Mr. E. Brown

I do not know on what the statement in the first part of the Question is based. The annual figures of cases and deaths for 1942 were the lowest recorded in the past ten years and the average figures for the last four years have been substantially less than for earlier years. The answer to the last part of the Question is "No, Sir."

Mr. Viant

asked the Minister of Health the cause of the immunity from diphtheria in 1941 of the 3,530 children under five years of age in Northamptonshire immunised in 1942; and why, in records for 1941 and 1942, they are included amongst the immunised when they were not immunised in 1941?

Mr. Brown

I assume that my hon. Friend's Question related to a recent Press statement that no case of diphtheria had occurred among some 8,000 children under five immunised in Northamptonshire since 1941. If so, it seems to be based on a misunderstanding of that statement which neither gave separate numbers for the years 1941 and 1942 nor suggested that children inoculated in 1942 were immune from diphtheria in 1941.

Mr. Viant

asked the Minister of Health whether he will instruct medical officers when compiling diphtheria records to see that the incidence on the unimmunised and immunised is calculated on the populations as they exist at the time of the occurrence of the diphtheria cases and not as they happen to be a year or two after the cases have been recorded, when large numbers of the unimmunised will have been transferred to the immunised classification, although at the time of the occurrence of diphtheria they were actually unimmunised?

Mr. Brown

I know of no such record as my hon. Friend suggests. Exact calculation of the average immunised and unimmunised populations respectively at risk over any period is not practicable under present conditions. The only form of statement possible is therefore to give the numbers contracting diphtheria, after immunisation and without immunisation, respectively, and the number immunised at given dates.