Diphtheria

Diphtheria is a bacterial infection caused by Corynebacterium diphtheriae. The symptoms include difficulty in breathing, heart failure, paralysis and death. The serosurvey conducted by the ICMR’s National Institute of Epidemiology revealed that majority of the Indian children between the age 5 and 17 years are either only partially or non-immune to this infection. This comes despite the inclusion of vaccine in the national immunisation programme for over 4 decades.