PhD Thesis - ResearchSpace@Auckland - The University of Auckland

developments were also taking place. In New Zealand, pertussis vaccine was
introduced in 1941 and its combination, firstly with diphtheria vaccine (as the double
vaccine) and then with tetanus (as the triple vaccine) by the early 1950s was the
subject of much discussion between the doctors and the Health Department. By this
time the influence of the World Health Organization (WHO) on departmental
immunisation decisions were plainly visible and WHO was wholeheartedly in favour
of immunisation. BCG was introduced into schools during this period, and Britain
had commenced a similar scheme. Nevertheless, the position of the United States was
in stark contrast to New Zealand, because, as Georgina Feldberg and Linda Bryder
have both pointed out, BCG was never used as part of a national immunisation
programme. 48 This chapter discusses New Zealand’s initial enthusiasm for BCG and
has shows how, despite universal uptake in the 1950s, the usefulness of BCG was
being hotly debated less than ten years later.
Chapter Four considers parental responses to the Department’s immunisation
programmes. Most parents in this period (1941-62) were favourable to their offspring
receiving immunisation and accepted the advice of the Department and doctors, often
without question. The Health Department believed it was a mother’s duty to have her
children immunised and failure to do so was perceived as negligence. Hammonds has
argued that this was also an integral belief of the health authorities in the earlier New
York City diphtheria immunisation campaign of 1929-32. 49 Opposition to the Health
Department’s immunisation programmes in New Zealand came from the BUAV
although its overall impact was negligible. The BUAV’s shift in focus from the mid-
1950s to concentrate on vivisection meant there was no further organised anti-
immunisation group in New Zealand until the 1980s.
Some resistance to immunisation came from Maori, whose children had been
receiving typhoid immunisations since the 1920s. From the 1940s Maori began to
question the consent process as permission to immunise was only required from tribal
committees as the Department thought it was too difficult to obtain parental
48 L. Bryder, ‘We shall not find salvation in inoculation: BCG vaccination in Scandinavia, Britain and
the USA, 1921-1960’, Social Science and Medicine, 49, 1999, pp.1157-67.
G. Feldberg, Disease and Class. Tuberculosis and the shaping of modern North American society,
New Jersey, 1995.
49 E. M. Hammonds, Childhood’s Deadly Scourge: The Campaign to Control Diphtheria in New York
City, 1880-1930, Baltimore, 1999.
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