Canada has one of the lowest child vaccination rates in the developed world. Measles, another now-vaccine-preventable disease, killed 800 in 1926. Willie, a student of Toronto’s still-standing William Burgess Elementary School, had experienced the most common death to Canadian children at that time. Diphtheria hasn’t killed anyone in Canada since 2000, but the disease remains in check purely due to immunization. In the former Soviet Union, for instance, plummeting vaccination rates after the fall of communism brought about a diphtheria resurgence that killed 1,000 children.

Source: National Post September 26, 2018 16:07 UTC