[jimenato]

Hope all your vaxes are up to date.

Diphtheria-stricken child still in serious condition, says hospital | In English | EL PA�S

The child is the first recorded case in Spain of the infectious disease since 1987, when the last two patients were treated.

EL PAÍS has learned that the reason the child had not been immunized against the disease is that his parents oppose vaccines.

Vaccination rates in Spain are between 90 and 95 percent following systematic public health campaigns that began in 1945. Thanks to these efforts, the dangerous disease had been eradicated. Diphtheria attacks the respiratory system and several of the body’s organs, and can prove fatal.

 

[jimenato]

If this is correct the poor boy has died.

Officials say a six-year-old boy who had been the first child to contract diphtheria in Spain in 29 years has died from the disease in a Barcelona hospital.

...

The boy had been a resident of Olot — a small city north of Barcelona and near the border with France — who had not been vaccinated against the disease because his parents had opted against inoculation.