200,000 in Chch took vaccine

Press, 17 February 1983, Page 1

200,000 in Chch took vaccine

Parliamentary reporter

More than 200,000 people in Christchurch were vaccinated in 1961 and 1962 with the contaminated poliomyelitis vaccine now the subject of two special reports to the Minister of Health, Mr Malcolm.

The reports are following up allegations made in the weekly newspaper, “Truth," that the Health Department went ahead with a mass immunisation campaign using a vaccine it knew to be contaminated with a monkey virus, and which was prohibited in the United States and Britain. In the mass vaccination almost two million New Zealanders were given the contaminated oral vaccine.

The Health Department is adopting a “no comment” line until the first report called by Mr Malcolm from the department’s epidemiology committee is presented about March 7. Mr Malcolm commissioned the ■ report to "confirm or allay fears” raised in the series of "Truth” reports.

He has also called for another report from the

chairman of the State Services Commission, Dr M. C. Probine. This will look at claims by the newspaper that the department ignorned advice from its chief virologist, Dr William Hamilton, to conduct a full-scale inquiry into the effects of the contaminated vaccine.

It will also try to find whether the department misled the public in saying that documents giving details of tenders for the vaccine had been destroyed, when copies were still on the files. The epidemiology committee will see what risks were associated with using the vaccine in the 1961-1962 campaign. Over that period almost two million people were given first and second doses of the vaccine. About 800,000 of these were children. Almost 30,000 were infants who were given three doses.

"Truth” said that the virus had been found in overseas studies in 1961 to have caused tumours, and produced infection in the children of vaccinated persons. The infection had been shown to be contagious.

Although the Health Department is officially saying nothing until the first report is with the Minister, departmental spokesmen said yesterday that the reason for the choice in 1961 of the contaminated vaccine was that the risk of contracting poliomyelitis from another vaccine available was greater than probable illeffects from the contami-

nated vaccine. The mass vaccination treated about 90 per cent of the population and eradicated the disease from the end of 1962, except for four reported cases, to the present day. the spokesman said. There had been no reported case of ill-effects from the vaccine. Mr Malcolm gave "Truth” access to the department’s files on the purchase of the vaccine, and records of meetings and departmental memoranda. • According to the newspaper, the files show that the department knew the vaccine was contaminated before it was bought, and that the epidemiological commit-

tee responsible for the purchase could have easily and cheaply purified the vaccine. The Canadian supplier of the vaccine, Connaught Laboratories, said in a letter on file that no vaccine sent to New Zealand by them was free of the contamination. However, the departmental spokesman said that there was some evidence . that not all batches were contaminated. “Truth” also asserted that the special message to parents advising them to vaccinate their children said that the vaccine had been “well tested and shown to be harmless.” The department’s files showed that a special meeting held in 1973 to discuss the possible effects of the virus in the vaccine recommended a survey of multiple sclerosis and neoplastic diseases in the population . for the next 10 to 20 years.

The meeting concluded that the epidemiology committee knew of the virus in the vaccine but bought it in good faith in view of the, at that time, unknown potential pathogenicity for humans. The epidemiology committee which will report to the Minister comprises Professor K. W. Newall, professor of the department of community medicine, Wellington Clinical School, (chairman); Dr J. S. Reid, a leading family doctor and the nominee of the New Zealand branch of the Royal College of General Practitioners; Professor F. A. De Hamel, professor of pubic health in the department of preventive and social medicine at the Otago Medical School; Professor M. D. H. Holdaway, department of pediatrics and child health, Otago Medical School; Dr W. R. Lang, an Auckland authority on communicable diseases; Dr Joan Faoagali, pathologist and microbiologist at Christchurch Hospital; and Dr Y. E. Hermon. a leading virologist in the National Health Institute.