Painful time after vaccination

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32848, 23 February 1972, Page 3

Painful time after vaccination

?N.Z. Press Association/ AUCKLAND, Feb. 22. A Wellington student, Mr David Cuthbert, had a painful experience after a smallpox vaccination—he went temporarily blind for 18 days.

Mr Cuthbert, who is national president of the University Students’ Association, was to visit Europe early this year. He had the usual vaccination against smallpox. But soon after the vaccination —in his arm—his face began to swell and sores, usually associated with a smallpox vaccination, began to appear on his face. Mr Cuthbert said today in Auckland that his face had been so swollen that he could not see. As a result of the swelling; his eye nerves were damaged, and he was temporarily blinded. He spent 18 days in the eye department at Wellington Hospital undergoing treatment. “At one stage my face was twice its normal size,” said Mr Cuthbert. The doctor who treated him had said the trouble might have been caused by the smallpox vaccine being introduced to other parts of his body, in this case, his face. A spokesman for the Health Department in Auckland today said it had been known for smallpox vaccine to be transferred to other parts of the body. This could be done by people scratching the sore which develops on the site of the injected virus.