‘Hope Amid Terror’

Your editorial was a welcome change from the usual distressing news from El Salvador. It is encouraging to learn that lifesaving forces are also in practice in that war-torn country.

“There are no longer any scientific or technological limits to mass immunization,” Jonas Salk has said. “All that remains to be done is to put all this on a larger scale and apply it.” Colombia, with the help of UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) and the World Health Organization, has provided a model that proves a developing country can protect its children against diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, measles and polio. Now El Salvador has provided a second model--this time, taking time out from a war to do it.

With more than 4 million children dying each year and another 5 million being severely disabled by these diseases, it is, indeed, a noble undertaking on behalf of UNICEF to try to have all the world’s children immunized by 1990--at a cost of only $5 per child. Five dollars is a small price to pay for a child’s life.

Many thanks for calling attention to this little-publicized story.

NICHOLAS R. MOORE

Altadena