Word: diphtheria
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...World Health Organization issued a jubilant report: in 36 countries on six continents diphtheria is now "a vanishing disease, and no longer a public health problem." Reason: spreading use of anti-diphtheria shots. Heaviest toll is now among children about four years...
Hopefully they go on: "We may envisage the use of a standard packet of antigens . . . for the great bulk of the consumers. This would [represent] the various strains of the Group A streptococci, and the staphylococci, pneumococci, tubercle bacilli, typhoid, paratyphoid and diphtheria organisms, and eventually the virus antigens of poliomyelitis, rubella, measles and other diseases. Other packets of disease antigens for special regions, seasons or fractions of the population might be demanded...
...Republic of Korea health officials record 2,053 cases this year, 766 deaths. Japan reports 3,386 cases, 1,194 deaths-Japanese B far outstrips diphtheria, cholera, typhus and polio as a killer. After giving up to 500,000 inoculations with a killed-virus vaccine which proved too weak to be effective, the U.S. Army is now ready to begin laboratory testing of a greatly improved vaccine which may lick Japanese B entirely for Americans in the Orient. But even if it works (which will take years to determine), the Japanese themselves are not likely to benefit. In the homeland...
Other successes were scored against heart disease caused by diphtheria and syphilis, both virtually wiped out. Another form of the enemy is being routed largely through penicillin: rheumatic heart disease. But the situation is more complex in regard to the two commonest forms of heart trouble, which account for more than 90% of all heart disease...
...Though U.S. Public Health officials noted another minute drop in the weekly total of reported polio cases, indicating that 1955's worst is past, they were alarmed by increases in diphtheria: 237 cases in six weeks (more than half in Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina...