POLIOMYELITIS CONTROL

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27150, 21 September 1953, Page 9

POLIOMYELITIS CONTROL

“COMPLETE FAILURE” SEEN

(Rec. 10 pjn.) ROME, September 19. World Health Organisation experts today said that efforts to control poliomyelitis had been a complete failure and warned that unless effective control measures were introduced, the disease would present an increasingly serious problem. In a report after the first international meeting on poliomyelitis ever held under World Health Organisation auspices, the experts said the pattern of the disease had changed considerably throughout the world in recent years. The transformation of the relatively uncommon infantile paralysis of the nineteenth century into epidemic poliomyelitis presented one of the most formidable problems of public health. Dealing with the spread of the disease, the committee said the virus entered by the mouth and the primary place of infection was the alimentary tract. Poliomyelitis was a highly infectious disease spread by intimate association with an infected person. As the first step in the world antipoliomyelitis programme, the committie recommended that the World Health Organisation select research laboratories in all continents to identify, classify and study strains of the poliomyelitis virus. It also suggested that in times of* epidemics, health authorities should avoid removals of tonsils and adenoids and diphtheria and whooping cough vaccinations.