PhD Thesis - ResearchSpace@Auckland - The University of Auckland

cause of death for both preschoolers and school children up to 14 was now accidents
with respiratory diseases relegated to second place. 167
Although other factors, such as improvements in housing, diet and health need to be
taken into account, immunisation would certainly have played a significant part in
reducing Maori death rates in children under five. This was because this period
especially, coincided with a number of campaigns, aimed at developing a growing
awareness in New Zealand parents of the importance of their children receiving the
specified vaccines. However, a survey in 1963 did reveal that in one area 70 percent
of Maori and Pacific Island babies had not been immunised. 168 The Health
Department acknowledged this, commenting that the ‘epidemic diseases which were
once common, typhoid fever, scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping cough, and chicken
pox, seldom cause death today, but the occasional death that does occur is too often
that of a Maori child’. 169 Reaching people who did not immunise their children, often
due to socio-economic factors, became an increasingly important priority for the
Health Department.
One aspect of the 1960 study compared rates for tuberculosis per 100,000 of the
population. In Maori under-fives, the incidence of respiratory tuberculosis, 1954 to
1958, revealed that 14.5 Maori children died compared to 0.7 European children. For
five to 14 years the figures were 4.7 for Maori and 0.1 for European. 170 By the late
1960s figures for Maori had certainly improved although they were still not as good
as European rates. 171 The Health Department confidently asserted in 1963 that
‘Tuberculosis can no longer be considered a significant cause of death in either
Europeans or Maoris’. 172 Despite this, and the fact that the tuberculosis figure for
1963 was the lowest ever recorded at 3.7 per 100,000, the medical establishment still
had concerns about this disease. From 1963, immunisation of schoolchildren with
BCG continued for those resident in the North Island only, due to the higher figures
and larger numbers of Maori and Pacific Islanders who lived there.
167 ibid., p.18, p.20.
168 AJHR, 1964, H-31, p.22.
169 AJHR, 1965, H-31, p.30.
170 R. J. Rose, Maori-European Standards of Health, Department of Health, 1960, p.14.
171 R. J. Rose, Maori-European Comparisons in Mortality, Department of Health, 1972, p.72.
172 AJHR, 1964, H-31, p.56.
196