POLIOMYELITIS INOCULATIONS

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28099, 15 October 1956, Page 6

POLIOMYELITIS INOCULATIONS

SECOND INJECTIONS SHORTLY

Nine-year-olds in schools in the Canterbury and West Coast health district will receive their second poliomyelitis inoculations this month. The medical teams’ programme is planned to resume on October 23 and schools will be visited in the same sequence as on the first occasion. The programme is expected to last 12 days. “This time we will probably find things a lot easier.’’ said the district medical officer of health (Dr. A. Douglas) last evening. “We have learned quite a lot already. In the bigger schools, it is easier to take the children by classes rather than alphabetically. Instead of disrupting the whole school for the period of inoculations, only individual classes will be interrupted in future.”

“There is also a psychological lesson,” said Dr. Douglas. “We have found it is much better if we keep the children in a separate room after they have been given their injection. In this way, the children who have their injections last are not affected by the sight or talk of the others.” Under the present scheme, 4850 children will be inoculated. The supplies of serum for the second series of injections is expected to arrive in Christchurch in the next few days. “We cannot plan to inoculate children of other ages until there are further supplies of serum,” said Dr. Douglas. “That will be a matter of arrangement with the United Kingdom. The demand for it is such in all parts of the world that we were extremely lucky to get enough to inoculate the nine-year-olds/’