IRELAND
Irish Examiner
By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter
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.
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