Vigilance urged as Victorian-era diseases return
RISE IN SCARLET FEVER AND MUMPS
THE number of people hospitalised with potentially deadly Victorian diseases has soared in Yorkshire and the Humber to a five-year high with scarlet fever and mumps prevalent.
Experts are warning that anti-vaccine sentiment could see some of these Dickensian illnesses “bounce back” - while parents have been urged to be on the lookout for signs in children as cases continue to rise. Figures from the NHS reveal that patients in the area were diagnosed with one of 13 Victorian diseases when admitted to hospital on 41,346 occasions in the year to March.
They include all people admitted with these illnesses - which include gout, tuberculosis, malnutrition, whooping cough, measles, scurvy, typhoid, scarlet fever, diphtheria, mumps, rickets, cholera, and vitamin D deficiency - even if it was not the primary reason for their admission.
The number was up by 23 per cent from 33,564 hospital admissions in 2020/21, having dipped during the pandemic where previously it had been rising year-on-year. It puts the number of in-patients diagnosed with these diseases at the highest level seen since at least 2017/18, when these figures begin.
The UK Health Security Agency provides weekly updates on infectious diseases. The latest update, ending June 5, proved encouraging for East Yorkshire with none recorded and it was the same story for north east Lincolnshire. But it was not such good news for North Lincolnshire with five cases of scarlet fever and one of tuberculosis.
However, it was a different picture for the week ending May 29 with nine cases of scarlet fever in Hull and two of tuberculosis. The East Riding had three cases of scarlet fever. North East Lincolnshire also had three cases of scarlet fever but there were no infectious diseases in North Lincolnshire.
There was even more cases of scarlet fever the week before (ending May 22) in Hull with ten cases while there were six in the East Riding. North East Lincolnshire had one case of the mumps while North Lincolnshire also had six cases of scarlet fever.
In the week ending May 15, Hull had 12 cases of scarlet fever while the East Riding had two and also a case of mumps. There were no infectious diseases in the south bank.
Hull had two cases of scarlet fever and one each of measles and mumps in the week ending May 8 while the East Riding had three cases of scarlet fever. Again, there were no infectious diseases in the south bank.
More widely, across Yorkshire and the Humber, there were 22,659 cases of gout diagnosed in the year to March 2022 - up 26 per cent from 18,016 the year before - as well as 17,406 cases of vitamin D deficiency (up 22 per cent from 14,324).
There were also 781 cases of malnutrition diagnosed, 343 cases of tuberculosis, 25 cases of rickets, 55 cases of scarlet fever, 37 cases of scurvy and 12 cases of typhoid fever. A further 16 cases of mumps, five cases of whooping cough, two cases of measles and five cases of diphtheria were also diagnosed.
Speaking to the Telegraph earlier this year, Stephen Baker, a professor of microbiology at the University of Cambridge, said it was “amazing that in 2021 people are still getting scurvy” and that was mostly due to “really poor diet”. Meanwhile, many of the diseases are preventable through vaccination, including measles, whooping cough, diphtheria and mumps.
Mr Baker said: “These are all completely vaccine preventable, particularly with measles which is super transmissible. Often you get these communities with a lot of anti-vaxxers, and they often get outbreaks of measles and mumps with people that refuse to have themselves or their kids immunised.
“If we stop immunising our children, then we go back to the Victorian era. We look upon these things as a bit of a thing in the past because they are a thing in the past, not because we’ve got rid of them. It’s because we’ve controlled them through immunisation. If we take away vaccines they will bounce back.”
If we stop immunising our children, then we go back to the Victorian era
Professor Stephen Baker