3 Disease Outbreaks in Mother and Baby Home Had 100% Infant Death Rate

By Conall O Fatharta
Irish Examiner
February 12, 2015

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/3-disease-outbreaks-in-mother-and-baby-home-had-100-infant-death-rate-312139.html

Three separate diphtheria outbreaks among infants in one of the country’s mother and baby homes had 100% mortality rates.

The revelation is contained in a 1945 report in the Irish Medical Journal concerning the prevalence of diphtheria in infants in the Sean Ross Abbey mother and baby home operated by the Sacred Heart Sisters in Tipperary.

The report, co-written by county medical officer for Tipperary North Riding, Dr JB O’Regan, lists seven diphtheria outbreaks between 1935 and 1941.

In three of the outbreaks, all of the 31 children who contracted the disease died. In total, between 1935 and 1941, 54 out of the 118 children who contracted diphtheria died — a mortality rate of 45%.

An abstract from another paper written by Dr O’Regan indicates the mortality rate for diphtheria in infants in the county, as a whole, between 1943 and 1944 was just 2.7%. Children dying from diphtheria in Sean Ross Abbey were excluded from those statistics.

“There were three deaths in the series of 125 cases — all in non-immunised children — one of whom died within 10 hours of admission to hospital. The low mortality rate of 2.4% is in keeping with the county rate for 1943, when, excluding those cases occurring among infants in Sean Ross Abbey, there were two deaths in 73 cases, a rate of 2.7%. The county rate for 1944 was 2.5% — 162 cases, 4 deaths.”

In his report on diphtheria in Sean Ross Abbey, Dr O’Regan says that from “the beginning of 1935 to the end of 1938, diphtheria was endemic” in the home and, in 1941, every child who contracted diphtheria died.

“Nine cases-nine deaths — 100% mortality,” he records.

The Irish Examiner managed to locate eight of the nine death certificates for the children who died in the 1941 outbreak. All cite the cause of death as diphtheria and acute enteritis, apart from one which cites diphtheria and cardiac failure.

Dr O’Regan also notes three of the nine children tested negative for the disease, while many of the children had green diarrhoea.

In his 1989 memoir To Cure and to Care, former State chief medical officer James Deeny noted the same infection in infants when he investigated the high level of infant deaths in the Bessborough mother and baby home run by the same religious order in Cork.

“Every baby had some purulent infection of the skin and all had green diarrhoea, carefully covered up. There was obviously a staphylococcus infection about. Without any legal authority I closed the place down and sacked the matron, a nun, and also got rid of the medical officer. The deaths had been going on for years,” he wrote.

Michael Dwyer of UCC’s School of History, who uncovered the report, said the attitude by the county medical officer to the children in Sean Ross Abbey exuded a “disturbingly cold detachment”.

“In one outbreak of diphtheria, all nine affected infants, none of whom were older than two months old, perished. Their passing is represented by a short stark statement: ‘Nine cases-nine deaths — 100% mortality.’ This tragedy stands somewhat analogously with what appears to be an effective public health response to diphtheria in the wider community, a response orchestrated by the very same health professionals responsible for the well-being of infants residing in Sean Ross mother and baby home,” he said.