Sir, – Further to Dr Tom O’Rourke’s letter (Letters, July 24th), I worked as a paediatrician in Coventry in the 1950s and remember only too clearly children’s deaths from whooping cough, measles, chicken pox, encephalitis and tuberculous meningitis. There were also the chronic results of infection to be treated: blindness, deafness and long-term lung disease. I also cannot forget the babies born deaf because of maternal infection with rubella.
The greatest advance of 20th-century medicine was immunisation, and we, like some continental countries, should have an immunisation certificate as a condition of entry to primary education. – Yours, etc,
DIANA BROWNE,
Mullaghmore,
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Co Sligo.