Typhoid Vaccination Campaign Lowers Death Rate from 37.4 in 1918 to 2.6 in 1924

Cabarrus County Makes Big Reduction in Typhoid. . . Deaths from This Disease Have Been Brought to Low Figure as Shown in Health Bulletin

The reduction in the number of cases of typhoid fever in Cabarrus County is graphically shown in the January number of the Health Bulletin, published by the North Carolina State Board of Health at Raleigh.

A table is used in which the figures for the 12 counties where “typhoid vaccination campaigns have been most continuous and intensive” during the years between 1915 and 1925.

The Cabarrus County campaign started in 1918 and the figures given are for the seven years before 1919 to 1925 inclusive. They show the death rate for typhoid dropping from 37.4 to 2.6 100,000 in 1924.

There is only one break in the steadily reducing number of deaths and that was in 1923 when there was an epidemic of typhoid among the residents of Shankletown, a settlement of negroes outside of the city limits. In this year an epidemic was prevalent among these people, a number of them dying. The death rate for that year was 16.4.

For the seven years given in the table, the dates were as follows: 37.4 for 1919; 5.9 for 1920; 8.5 for 1921; 5.6 for 1922; 16.4 for 1923; and 2.6 for 1924.

Only two counties given in the table have a lower death rate than does Cabarrus. They ae Cumberland and Northampton, both of which have no deaths from the disease. Some of the counties have much higher rates. Among them are Rowan with a death rate of 12.7, Guilford County with a death rate of 9.0, and Wilson with a death rate of 17.1.

From page 2 of The Concord Daily Tribune, Saturday, Jan. 9, 1926

newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073201/1926-01-09/ed-1/seq-2/