§ Mr. Ashleyasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will estimate the proportion of children aged 1 to 5 years at the beginning of 1975, who had been fully immunised against whooping cough; and if he will give the figures for the proportion fully vaccinated of the children aged 1 to 5 years who had whooping cough between October 1974 and March 1975 and were studied in the report of 8,000 cases by Miller and Fletcher.
§ Mr. Moyle, pursuant to his reply [Official Report, 22nd March 1977; Vol. 182W 928, c. 491], gave the following information:
The number of children born in the years 1970 to 1974 in England and Wales and fully vaccinated by 1st January 1975—i.e., under 5 years old—as a percentage of live births for those years was 60 per cent.
The Miller and Fletcher study, published in the British Medical Journal of 17th January 1976, provided information about 4,784 children under 5 years of age who were notified as having whooping cough in the period October 1974 to March 1975. Of these cases it was found that 29 per cent. had been fully vaccinated, 8 per cent. partially vaccinated and 39 per cent. not vaccinated at all; in the remaining 23 per cent. of cases the vaccination history of the child was unknown.