Health in the Community

It is not well known that the Leeds West area has the highest immunisation rates in the city. As a result young people and adults in future are less likely to go down with those classic dangerous and debilitating diseases such as T.B., measles and polio.

For anyone who thought that T.B. was a disease of the industrial cities of the nineteenth and early twentieth century the recent outbreak in a school in Leicester is a salutary lesson. Moreover there are increasing reports of T.B. cases in London.

In Bramley and Wortley there are still standing examples of the Council's "sunshine houses" with specially adapted fresh air windows built in the 1930s and '40s for T.B. sufferers. In the 1980s as a result of immunisation T.B. was regarded as a Third World disease. In 1950 my mother caught polio in Bradford where she worked and spent 12 months in a classic iron lung in St Luke's Hospital. You can still see an iron lung in the new Thackery Museum at St James Hospital.

As a child I was a guinea pig for the polio vaccines before those days of testing new anti polio treatments. It was injections before the successful sugar lump. Thankfully I did not contract polio and it was encouraging to read last week that internationally the world eradication of polio is in sight.

The World Health Authority now predicts that the world will be free of that crippling, nerve destroying, muscle-wasting disease by 2005. No more calliper leg irons. Cases of the potentially fatal childhood disease more than halved in 2000 to 3500 after a record 550 million children in 82 countries were vaccinated.

Of course there is a huge debate about vaccination and in particular the triple vaccine, But the problem with questioning the triple vaccine is that it is resulting in youngsters missing out on any vaccination. That in turn makes us all vulnerable again.

With all the focus on foot and mouth disease it is worth stressing that no human has ever died of foot and mouth, indeed no animal has died of it. The disease itself is not a killer. There are whole countries in the world where foot and mouth, like flu. Is rampant and nothing at all is done about it. The problem of course in our country is the market value of animals. They are worth much less and have lower yields with foot and mouth.

Protecting against it is vital and in future may well include vaccination (though this is resisted by farmers on the grounds of cost and animal value in the market). But while we debate the merits of vaccination for animals to protect against foot and mouth (and yes Leeds West is all a restriction area as a result of a nearby outbreak at Rawdon, so even my home at the bottom of Broad Lane in Bramley is covered) we must not lose sight of the need for vaccinating children against real killer diseases. So well done to doctors, district nurses, health visitors, teachers and the schools in Leeds West for leading the way. We must not relax - vaccination is vital to the future of our children.

© John Battle 13th April 2001