Polio Vaccination

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 886, 27 July 1956, Page 26

Polio Vaccination

This is the text of a talk on health broadcast recently from ZB, YA and YZ stations of the NZBS by DR.

H. B.

TURBOTT

Deputy-Director-

General of Health

UST over two months ago I told you we might have some Salk vaccine for use here in the last half of this year, You have already heard that the British Ministry of Health is letting us have some, enough fox 25,000 children. There is some loss in testing and a little in use so that, in practice, the number of children who can be protected this year will be under that figure. There will be enough to satisfy the expected response in one age group. The committee of experts that is advising the Government on poliomyelitis vaccination has recommended that, when vaccine becomes available, it be offered to the age group 5-9 years, in which there are- just over 190,000 children, Further, in the event of shortage of vaccine, the committee recommends that the older ages within the group be given priority. It seems we may be able next

month to offer protection to nine-year-olds, and eight-year-olds next if parental acceptance in the previous group is less than expected. The reason for choosing primary schoo] ages, and doing the older years therein first, is that over the whole country, this age group, and particularly as it ages, bears the brunt of paralysis fairly heavily. And it is

against the paralysis that the vaccine is particularly effective. Preliminary evaluations from America, Canada, Denmark, South Africa, Germany and Sweden suggest that the vaccine may not stop infection, but will protect against paralysis. That, of course, is just what we want. The infection is a transient illness. like ‘flu, that about one hundred of us get every time there is one proven case of polio, It happens that it is good to have this infection in the community. Polio is widespread in the tropical countries, and there is very little paralysis as an end result in those areas. In developed countries, like ours, polio strikes at later ages, and there is more resultant paralysis. It seems to be true that the younger the child is infected the less. is there any likelihood of disease. So what developed countries want is to have polio infection about so that we get peppered with it while young, suffer mild unrecognised infections, and so build up natural immunity to the disease. If, while this is going on, we can, through artificial means build up protection against the dangers-the paralytic effects-then we are on the road to controlling poliomyelitis. Now, it does seem from overseas evidence, that the Salk vaccine will protect against nolio paralysis, not 100 per cent, but sufficiently to make all countries that have used it, and the World Health Organisation, sav that it really is effective in primary school children. Nobody knows yet whether it is effective in pre-school ages or post-primary school ages, That is another reason why the first offer in New Zealand is to the primary school ages. As they age they will carry the protection with them, we hope. Nobody knows yet whether this will be so, but the indications from work already done are that the immunity after

ll -_ vaccination may be much more prolonged than was originally expected. We are not using polio vaccination in any experimental way in New Zealand. We have waited until other countries have used it on a big scale. We have waited for their results. The World Health Organisation put an Expert Committee to work assessing those results. The verdict was that the vaccine was safe when made under proper safeguards, and that it was effective in primary school children. We _ have obtained our material from the Old

Country, where it is being tested for safety much more meticulously than in U.S.A. We have to leave it to parents, now, to decide for themselves. In the world, at present, there is no way of offering you a safer choice, To help you, I pass on the assurance of the World Health Organisation’s _poliomyelitis expert, that any risk with the vaccine is of the

order of 1 in 20,000,000. Im 1950 in the ages 5-9 in New Zealand the occurrence of polio paralysis was 4.3 in each 10,000 children, which is of the order of over 8,600 paralysed cases in 20,000,000, To Health men the world over the risk is infinitesimal, the protection against paralysis worth while. Parents, it’s over to vou!