Word: diphtheria
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Died. Mary Beard, 70, former director of the American Red Cross Nursing Service (1938-44), one of the organizers of the wartime Nurse's Aide Corps; after long illness; in Manhattan. After recovering from a childhood attack of diphtheria, she resolved "to help sick people," spent her life studying and improving nursing and nurse education throughout the world...
...seriously. Out to survey Colorado's health came two doctors from the American Public Health Association, backed by money from the Commonwealth Fund. They found that: 1) Colorado had the third worst record among the states in per capita deaths from scarlet fever, was almost as bad in diphtheria, pneumonia, infant mortality; 2) in five years more than 1,600 Coloradans (in a population of 1,123,296) had died unnecessarily of preventable diseases...
...health officials disagree with the current British theory: that more dangerous new strains of diphtheria bacilli have developed, in the U.S., the standard treatments-immunization with toxoid injections, therapy with antitoxin-are still effective...
Officials think the rise may be due to 1) a slackening in immunization, 2) an increase in vulnerability among young adults (many recent diphtheria deaths have been among returning G.I.s). By Army figures, about half of those in the 19-to-30 age group are susceptible. Their immunization is a problem because diphtheria inoculations often make grownups seriously...
Immunization of children is compulsory in fewer than a fourth of the states. To be safe, a child should get two diphtheria shots at six months, a third before starting school...