Word: rubella
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Immunization levels for measles, diphtheria, rubella and--most frightening--polio, have been falling for several years. In 1964 78.6 per cent of all children aged one to four had been vaccinated against polio, but by 1975 that figure had fallen to 63 per cent; many experts cite 80 per cent as the minimum level needed to prevent outbreaks. In Boston, a 1975 study showed that levels were lowest in the poor, black areas of Roxbury and North Dorchester, where in two schools surveyed the immunization level had fallen to 15 per cent. In inner cities and rural slums throughout...
Blood Test. Since the confidential weddings do not require proof of a blood test, some state officials are concerned about increases in the incidence of venereal disease and rubella during pregnancies. State Assemblyman Robert Burke of Huntington Beach introduced a bill last spring that would require a blood test and a three-day waiting period for all marriages, but the wedding chapels lobbied hard against the bill and killed it in committee. "Some of our customers may be frightened to death of needles," explains Steinmetz. Then, too, the tests would add to the cost of secret weddings, which usually...
...York, for example, State Health Commissioner Robert P. Whalen reports that about 20% of the 300,000 children due to enter first grade have not been immunized against polio, measles or rubella. Most of them are not even protected against diphtheria, the vaccine for which is included in the three-way D.T.P. (diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis) shots that have long been standard treatment for all infants. In some areas, Whalen says, less than half of the entering class have been immunized. There have been similar or even greater drop-offs in vaccinations among preschool children in most other states...
...Common or "red" measles (rubeola) used to strike 4 million children a year, kill 400 and leave 800 with irreparable brain damage. By last year, the total number of cases was down to 22,000; only a handful had serious consequences. Much the same is true of German measles (rubella), the crippler of the fetus during pregnancy. From a high of 58,000 reported cases (far below the true total) in 1969, the number of rubella cases dropped to 12,000 last year, and only 45 infants were born with resulting deformities. Smallpox, dreaded and widespread as recently...
...cause of the current parental apathy and neglect, New York's Commissioner Whalen suggests, is that many of today's preschoolers have mothers who are too young to have been aware of the great polio panics of the early 1950s, or of the fetus-crippling rubella epidemics of the early '60s. In ethnic ghettos, poverty, illiteracy and language barriers are also factors...