Thousands Vaccinated In Midlands

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29722, 16 January 1962, Page 11

Thousands Vaccinated In Midlands

(N.Z.P jl. -Reuter—Copyright)

LONDON, Jan. 15. Thousands of Midlands people queued yesterday to receive smallpox vaccination.

The key city in the smallpox scare is Bradford, in Yorkshire, where hospitals have put on special staff to deal with the vaccinations.

Last week four people died in Britain from smallpox, three of the victims in Yorkshire and one in Kent Hospital Sealed Off

Medical staff at Otley Hospital, in Yorkshire, where a man has died with suspected smallpox symptoms, worked non-stop for three hours last night vaccinating people who had visited the hospital in the last few days. There are about 150 patients in the hospital. Relatives of patients and staff and others who had had contact with the hospital since Wednesday, the earliest it was considered the man could have been infected, were vaccinated In a temporary clinic set up in a lecture room near the entrance gates Large notices stated that the hospital was completely closed to the public. There

were barricades and hospital staff on duty at entrances to ensure no-one entered the grounds. Routine admissions and discharges are suspended. The hospital is two miles from the village of Menston, where a baby girl was admitted with suspected smallpox on Friday. At Bradford, doctors and nurses working 13 hours a day had in 36 hours vaccinated 27,000 people. Cases Confirmed

• Laboratory tests of a young nurse and four children suspects—two boys and two girls—at Oakwell Hospital Birstall, near Leeds, confirmed that they had smallpox. it was stated last night A two-year-old child was yesterday taken to the hospital with a rash, believed to be smallpox. At Dartford (Kent), a 21-year-old Pakistani girl is in hospital as a suspected smallpox case.

At London Airport. 48 passengers were held aboard an airliner from Amsterdam because some Pakistani immigrants had complained of feeling unwell They were all “cleared” later.

At Middlesbrough, the bjedical officer of health

(Dr. E. C. Downer) addressed 440 Pakistanis, asking for the names of those who had recently visited Bradford. Dr. Donald Johnson, Conservative M.P. for Carlisle, is to urge the Government to reintroduce compulsory vac-

cination, abandoned with the introduction of tihe National Health Service in 1948. 13 More Deaths

In smaMpox-abricken Karachi, Pakistan, the disease killed 13 people in the 48 hours ending 6 am. yesterday, according to health authorities.

The entire population of the city—over two million—was to have been vaccinated by last night. On the Continent, the situation in major centres included: Dusseldorf: Three confirmed cases in hospital, and about 135.000 of the city’s 700,000 population vaccinated in the past 10 days.

Paris: One airport employee a suspected case and contacts being sought for vaccination.

Lisbon: Seven Portuguese refugees from Goa isolated as suspected cases. Rome and Vienna: Strict precautions in force at ports of entry, but no cases reported. ,