ORAL POLIO VACCINE

Press, Volume C, Issue 29671, 15 November 1961, Page 22

ORAL POLIO VACCINE

First Use In Christchurch

Health Department staff went to the Orange Hall for the monthly open poliomyelitis clinic yesterday with some foreboding. The new Sabin oral vaccine was to be used for the first time in Christchurch, and some of the staff had visions of babies not knowing what was good for them and having to be given the Salk injected vaccine as before.

The first baby, however—-lO-months-old Brigid Shaughnessy, daughter of Mr and Mrs T. Shaughnessy, of Sawyers’ Arms road, Papanui—took the vaccine at a gulp and smiled, and everyone else gulped and smiled too. Succeeding recipients of the syrupy red liquid in which the vaccine was hidden seemed just as satisfied as Brigid, and indeed there was a most marked contrast between their reaction and the crying of those being given their second or third injections of Salk vaccine. “We are extremely pleased with the ease of handling of the new vaccine,” said the District Medical Officer of Health (Dr. L. F. Jepson). “It will save our staff a tremendous amount of work with the packing, sterilising, and general care of syringes and needles. The improvement in the children’s reaction to getting the vaccine this way, as compared with the injection method, is most gratifying. “We are still giving the Salk vaccine to children over 12 months and to pregnant mothers and other adults, but as supplies of the oral vaccine increase we shall no doubt switch over progressively to this. We should clean up within six months the remainder of the smali babies Who have been started on a course of Salk vaccine.”

The department would be grateful, he said, if in future mothers brought along their own spoons for’ the babies to take their vaccine. This applied both to city and country clinics. Oral vaccine would be used in the country clinics run from Christchurch as from today, he added.