§ Mr. Ashleyasked the Secretary of State for Social Services, pursuant to his reply of 17th January 1977, if he will give 306W details of how the estimate of 50 cases of encephalopathy arising from whooping cough in the years 1964 to 1975 was obtained, since the number of cases is not known.
§ Mr. David Ennals,pursuant to his reply [Official Report 17th February 1977; Vol. 926, c. 307–10], gave the following information:
A Public Health Laboratory Service Study in the winter of 1974–5 reported two cases of encephalitis among 8,000 cases of whooping cough. If the same ratio is applied to the 216,000 notifications of whooping cough during 1964 to 1975 an estimate of the order of 50 is obtained.
§ Mr. Ashleyasked the Secretary of State for Social Services how many clinics and general practitioners are now offering parents a choice between the triple vaccine and the double diptheria/tetanus one which excludes whopping-cough.
§ Mr. Ennals,pursuant to his reply [Official Report, 17th February 1977; Vol. 926, c. 307–10], gave the following information:
Information on how many clinics and general practitioners have offered parents such a choice is not available but the amount of diptheria/tetanus vaccine supplied in the UK has more than doubled since 1972.
§ Mr. Ashleyasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will give the evidence on which the joint committee bases its view that the incidence of brain damage following vaccination is about 1 in 300,000; what period of time the joint committee considered; whether it relied solely on reactions reported to the Committee on the Safety of Medicines; whether it did any form of sample survey; whether it requested information from paediatricians; what criteria were used in deciding that brain damage was due to vaccination; and whether they included slight, moderate and severe brain damage.
§ Mr. Ennals,pursuant to his reply [Official Report, 17th February 1977; Vol. 926, c. 307–10], gave the following information:
The figure quoted is based on the uptake of vaccination as reported to my 307W Department and the incidence of brain damage reported to the Committee on Safety of Medicines during the period March 1964-December 1974. As I explained in the Adjournment debate on vaccine-damaged children on 17th [February—[Vol. 926, c. 879–90]—figures for the latter may be low because of under-reporting by doctors but, against this, not all cases reported are necessarily due to the vaccine. The respective figures were 6,810,515 children and 22 cases of encephalopathy. This estimate was produced to give a broad indication of the size of the risk and to show that the very much higher estimates that had been quoted by others were not realistic. The
Serial No Description Published SBH 50 and 50(1) … Hospital medical/dental staff. All grades except consultant and senior registrar in post. Annually SBH 57(3) … Domiciliary consultations Annually