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To that end the neighbouring school clinic was opened all day from Wednesday
afternoon, 28th December, for the remainder of that week, including Saturday morning.
All available Health Visitors and School Nurses were mobilised to visit the homes of
all pre-school children whose addresses were known and to make a house to house oranvas
to contact the school children whose addresses could not be obtained quickly enough.
Attendance during the first week was as follows:-
Wednesday, 28th December (half-day) 73
Thursday, 29th December 423
Friday, 30th December 986
Saturday, 31st December (half-day) 812
TOTAL:2.364
During the succeeding few weeks the campaign was extended to the rest of the
Borough and many thousands of injections were given.
Circular letters were sent to all practitioners in the Borough on the 21st and
28th December, the first informing them of the presence of diphtheria in the Borough;
and the second of the decision to launch an immunisation campaign and inviting their cooperation.
This resulted in general practitioners carrying out about three thousand
immunisations to add to the thousands done by the Council's own health services.
At a meeting of the informal Medical Liaison Committee the opportunity was taken to
give the general practitioner representatives fuller details of the situation and of the
objectives at which the Immunisation campaign was aiming.
In the light of the total number of consents received and the numbers from the
individual schools it was clear that the most expeditious and the most efficient use
of the resources would be for teams to visit the schools while the two special clinics
remained open.
An indication of the scope of the Immunisation measures is given by the following
comparative figures.
Normal consumption antigens (15 week period) 2,500 c.c's.
Emergency consumption from 28th December, 1955, (3 week period) 20,000 c.c's.
The amount of work involved was considerable and I would like to express my sincere
appreciation of the efforts of the doctors, nurses, medical auxiliaries, administrative and
clerical staff, driver and messengers and, on occasion, dentists and dental attendants who
displayed a remarkable team spirit in dealing with the immunisations at clinics or schools
or in shouldering as great a burden in keeping going, with depleted numbers, the other
essential health services. The caretaker of Bridge County Primary School was especially
helpful in many ways and showed great initiative and resourcefulness.
1 would also like to express my appreciation of the help given by the general
practitioners, the Public Health Laboratory Service and the Press.
Worthy of note was the appreciable delay in one or two cases between onset of
symptoms and admission to hospital, and the tendency to await the result of the swab
before giving appropriate treatment or admitting the case to hospital.
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