PhD Thesis - ResearchSpace@Auckland - The University of Auckland

diphtheria immunisation programme. Immunisations carried out by the Department
numbered 29,181 for 1948, 26,918 in 1953 and in 1954, 26,701 booster doses were
given out (16,651 of combined pertussis and diphtheria). 19 This was almost double
the number immunised in the early 1940s and very likely more as numbers immunised
by doctors were not always included. Prioritising diphtheria immunisation was a
successful move by the Department. By 1961 with only one case of diphtheria
notified, the Department declared ‘a spectacular victory for immunisation’ in the light
of the high incidence of the disease only a few years previously. 20 In a way it was, as
through utilising schools and establishing clinics the Department had, by the early
1950s, substantially reduced the incidence of the disease. This was, however, later
than other countries. Historian Clare Hooker has pointed out that in Australia
‘Federal and State governments took advantage of their increased role in wartime to
conduct broad, intensive advertising campaigns in most municipalities’ with the result
that in the state of Victoria, 78,000 children were immunised during 1942-43. 21
Nevertheless, Hooker qualified this statement, arguing that ‘diphtheria control
remained slow’ and that it ‘was not until the 1970s that it truly became a rare disease’,
well after New Zealand. 22
In Britain, which operated a national immunisation programme from 1940, 50 percent
of its child population was immunised by 1943. 23 Jane Lewis, a social policy
historian, argued that the ‘huge increase in numbers immunised and the concomitant
decrease in the death rate from diphtheria was due entirely to the national scheme’. 24
By 1950 there were 952 cases with 49 deaths and by 1965, 25 cases with no deaths. 25
This reflected a similar pattern to the one demonstrated in Australia; immunisation
proved to be a reasonably protracted experience to reduce the incidence rate to very
low levels. New Zealand, however, was not able to make significant progress with the
immunisation programme until after 1945 due to lack of resources and medical
personnel. Moreover, it was most likely that diphtheria immunisation was not a
19
AJHR, 1949, H-31, p.34, AJHR, 1954, H-31, p.61, AJHR, 1955, H-31, p.58.
20
AJHR, 1961, H-31, p.7.
21
C. Hooker, ‘Diphtheria, Immunisation and the Bundaberg Tragedy: A Study of Public Health in
Australia’, Health and History, 2, 2000, p.74.
22
ibid., p.74.
23
J. Lewis, ‘The Prevention of Diphtheria in Canada and Britain 1914-1945’, Journal of Social
History, 20, 1986-87, p.170.
24
ibid.
25
A.B. Christie, Infectious Diseases: Epidemiology and Clinical Practice, London, 1980, p.873.
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