WE’VE forgotten the horror.

The success of Australia’s immunisation program has led to a collective amnesia about the diseases that once stalked our children: diphtheria, scarlet fever, measles, whooping cough, polio and smallpox.

It would only take an ­infected passenger arriving at Sydney International Airport to trigger a major outbreak, but many NSW parents are forgetting or ­refusing to vaccinate their kids in the mistaken belief the diseases have died out.

media_camera A queue of parents and children for polio immunisation at mobile unit common across Australia in the early 1960s.

media_camera Children undergo heliotherapy treatment for polio in Victoria in the 1950s.

WELCOME TO THE MOST IGNORANT GENERATION EVER TO WALK THE EARTH: MY GENERATION

Jab rates have slipped to as low as 50 per cent in some NSW communities and Bondi’s rate is just 82 per cent — well below the 95 per cent rate needed to create “herd immunity” to stop outbreaks and protect vulnerable newborns.

A Sunday Telegraph investigation, as part of our successful “No Jab, No Play” campaign, today demonstrates why we can never be complacent.

NSW graveyards are crowded with the saddest of reminders: the graves of ­babies and children wiped out by vaccine-preventable diseases in the 19th and 20th centuries, when hundreds of infants died each year.

In 1863, there were 15,679 births and 6653 infant deaths in Sydney. Infant mortality (children under five) was a staggering 57.5 per cent of total deaths.

media_camera Sydney gravestones of children who died from now-preventable diseases.

media_camera Sydney gravestones of children who died from now-preventable diseases.

A quarter of child deaths were caused by diseases such as diphtheria and measles, according to a report by the Registrar-General of Births Deaths and Marriages, presented to Parliament in 1864.

Parents lived in constant fear of outbreaks, said Sydney University professor of population and health Peter Curson, author of a history of Australia’s infectious disease history Deadly Encounters.

“The measles epidemic of 1867 was the most severe childhood epidemic of the 19th century; 13,000 caught it and 70 per cent were under five. Some 800 children died in Sydney,” Prof Curson said.

DAILY TELEGRAPH COMMENT

WE thought this would be an easy story to do: go to a NSW graveyard, find headstones dedicated to children who died of polio or whooping cough, and tell the story of the epidemics that once stalked our children.

We wanted to prove to anti-vaccine parents — or those who forget to get jabs for their kids — that smallpox, polio and diphtheria could become terrifying monsters once again if we let our guard down.

But as it turned out, our whole society has forgotten those lost children. Burial records are incomplete. Headstones are crumbling. Cause-of-death records are incomplete. Countless children died in pain, and we don’t tell their stories.

In a three-month investigation, we trawled historical records, interviewed experts, filed through old newspapers and files and hunted for living relatives on ancestry.com.au. And it was there, in the families, that the children’s memories live on.

Susan Marggraff would never take a risk with vaccinations for her four children. That’s because Mrs Marggraff has always known of a great family tragedy: a terrible fortnight in 1891 when her great-grandmother May Adams lost seven of her siblings within a devastating fortnight on the family property outside Wagga Wagga. The children, aged between 18 and five, all caught diphtheria and died, along with a kindly neighbour, Mrs Wright, who came to help parents William and Elizabeth Adams care for their sick children.

“I couldn’t imagine the suffering they went through,” Ms Marggraff said.

In 2015, Australia enjoys one of the lowest mortality rates for children under five, with 3.8 children dying per 1000 live births. As recently as 1912 that figure was closer to 72 children per 1000 live births: a ­reduction of 1794 per cent in just over a century.

We have been fighting against aggressive anti-vaccination campaigners for years, in our groundbreaking No Jab, No Play campaign. We’ve had state and federal laws changed, and now vaccination rates are dramatically increasing as a result of our campaign.

But we can’t let it drop now.

Anti-vaccination types claim that improved infant mortality is thanks to better sanitation and nutrition. But the truth is plain when you examine the figures.

Diphtheria killed 4073 people in Australia ­between 1926 and 1935. The vaccine, introduced into school-based and infant immunisation programs in the 1930s, saw deaths plummet to just 44 between 1956 and 1965. Tetanus killed 625 people in 1945-55 but the vaccine, introduced in 1945, has resulted in zero deaths since the 1970s.

Immunisation expert Robert Booy said with the introduction of each vaccine, Australia saw “fantastic, sudden reduction in disease”.

Smallpox has been absent from Australia since 1938. Polio, which struck 40,000 Australians between the 1930s and 1960s, has also gone.

But just one cough from an infected overseas traveller could restart them — and if we don’t have 95 per cent vaccination rates, we don’t have herd immunity.

That puts every newborn at risk, and every child battling cancer. Even vaccinated children suffer ­terribly if they catch diseases like whooping cough, though they are less likely to die.

media_camera Sydney gravestones of children who died from now-preventable diseases.

A few years later scarlet fever hit our shores.

Then there was smallpox. In 1876, 19-year-old Catherine Holden from Millers Point caught smallpox. Her face erupted into the horrifying crusty pox and she was the first Sydney resident ­interned at the city’s quarantine station on December 30, 1876. She died soon after and her crude gravestone ­remains today. Two weeks later her three sisters, Mary Ann, 20, Hannah, 16, and ­Elizabeth, 6, also died.

By 1881 40 smallpox deaths sparked a witch-hunt with people turning on Chinese immigrants, whom they wrongly blamed for importing the disease. Another smallpox outbreak in 1913 led to riots.

Immunisation expert Robert Booy said with the ­introduction of each vaccine, Australia saw “fantastic, sudden reduction in disease”.

“We saw that with measles in the 1960s; suddenly death was reduced dramatically,” Prof Booy said.

Infectious diseases doctor Frank Bowden said the vaccination program “has ­become a victim of its own success, as these diseases ­recede due to the effectiveness of vaccination”.

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