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79
The following is a summary of the work done during the year :—
1,885 children born in the years 1943/1960 received two injections
only, 7,404 three. Of young persons born 1933/1942, the numbers were
783 and 7,816 ; of those born before 1933 who had not passed their
fortieth birthday 3,952 and 1,728, and of others forty-three and 223. In
all, 6,663 persons received two injections only during the year, and 17,171
three injections. 292 persons had received only the one injection by the
end of the year.
Inoculation with Live Vaccine. Inoculation by the killed vaccine
has certain disadvantages. While highly effective, its efficiency is not one
hundred per cent; frequent booster doses may be necessary. It is not easy
to persuade enough people to receive the injections and the vaccine is
expensive. In poorly developed communities, there is the added difficulty
of shortage of personnel to carry out the actual inoculations. Some see in
the use of attenuated live vaccines a method of overcoming these difficulties.
It is thought that because orally administered virus will imitate
natural infection by the natural route, almost life long and solid immunity
will follow one dose of each type of virus, and that the living virus will
confer a local alimentary resistance to re-infection that is not conferred
by killed vaccine.
Many however fear that the use of the live vaccine will result in the
spread of the organism to others, and might be unfortunate in certain
persons such as the cortisone-treated, those receiving irritant injections,
those recently operated on for the removal of tonsils and the pregnant.
Sabin's vaccine is being used in the Soviet Union and other countries,
having been administered to not less than fifty million persons. While Cox
strains have been used mostly in Central and South America, this vaccine
has been given to those in other countries, in all to two million people,
Poland uses the U.S.A. Koprowski vaccine. Sabin's vaccine is to be used
in the United States in 1961.
While it is generally accepted that the vaccine can spread from the
vaccinated to their contacts, there is no conclusive evidence that any of the
vaccine strains have ever caused a case of poliomyelitis, though there has
been a disturbing increase in the number of cases in some districts in
which these vaccines were being used. Untoward reactions were either
absenrt or insignificant. As yet, though, neither the safety nor the efficacy
of the vaccine have been proved, though reports from U.S.S.R. uphold
the sagety of vaccine. The degree of protection as judged by anti-body
formation in the population was satisfactory, and poliomyelitis receded
from the areas where the vaccine was used.
The Minister of Health in a reply to a question in Parliament early
in the year said that the Medical Research Council "will shortly carry
out small scale trials of Sabin oral poliomyelitis vaccine in selected cases."
These trials started in some thirty areas in April.