In the 1970s, pediatrician Dr. Robert Haggerty coined the term “the new morbidity” to describe a new era in American pediatrics, one in which infectious diseases were no longer the leading cause of illness and death among children. Nearly universal access to clean water, antibiotics and vaccines had transformed children’s health. Pediatricians were able to devote more time to identifying and addressing the behavioral, developmental and psychosocial issues affecting their patients. As I began my pediatric residency at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1989, I was witness to the evolution in pediatric health that Dr. Haggerty described decades earlier.
Nonetheless, there was at least one notable exception: The wards at Grady were full of children who had been infected with the bacteria Haemophilus influenzae type B, or Hib. During that first year of my training, every third infant and child assigned to me had developed pneumonia, meningitis, permanent deafness or other lifelong neurological complications from Hib. Others did not survive. While a vaccine against Hib had been developed in 1985, it could not be given until 18 months of age, long after the most vulnerable would die from the disease…
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