Protect our children

yeS, immunisation matters. I was brought up in a back-to-back house in one of the most deprived areas of Birmingham. At the age of eight, I caught diphtheria and languished in Little Bromwich isolation hospital for two months.

The death rate was appalling. There were two wards: one for children like me who had been immunised and one for those who had not.

There were two or three deaths in my ward during my time there, but in the other ward the removal of little corpses was almost a daily affair.

Three of my classmates did not survive the outbreak and when I returned to school I was something of a celebrity.

Thankfully, this awful disease has been beaten — but only because of large-scale immunisation.

JACK HOLLICK, Aldridge, W. Mids. WheN my grandfather was five, he survived measles, but was left profoundly deaf. his sister Mary caught the disease from him and died a week after her first birthday.

What would my great-grandmother say to the parents who are risking the lives of their children and others by refusing a vaccination? She would weep for their ignorance.

CERI REES, Tonyrefail, Mid Glamorgan.