Report on the outbreak of poliomyelitis during 1961 in Kingston-upon-Hull and the East Riding of Yorkshire.

  • Great Britain. Ministry of Health.
Date:
1963
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the outbreak of poliomyelitis during 1961 in Kingston-upon-Hull and the East Riding of Yorkshire. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    oral vaccine had been given but thereafter a substantial degree of protection was manifested. This experience also demonstrated that the vaccine was not associated with cases of poliomyelitis either in ‘those to whom it was given or in contacts, for only one case of poliomyelitis due to Type 2 poliovirus occurred during the entire outbreak even though widespread carriage of Type 2 virus was demonstrated in healthy infants who had not themselves received vaccine. In July, 1959, there began the largest outbreak of poliomyelitis ever experi- enced in Tashkent City of the Usbek, U.S.S.R. Nearly 88 per cent of the cases occurred in children under 5 and the majority of strains of polioviruses recovered were serologically Type 1. At the end of the 4th week of the outbreak, 304,000 (89:4 per cent) of the 340,000 children under 15 received a single dose of trivalent oral vaccine prepared from Sabin’s strains. ‘The number of cases of poliomyelitis declined sharply during the next 4 weeks and, though a significant number still occurred in those who had received vaccine, the attack rate in the latter was reduced compared with that in unvaccinated children. No precise estimate of the degree of protection was made, though the report from the Institute of Poliomyelitis of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the U.S.S:R. (Chumakov, 1960) and local health authorities concluded ‘that many cases of poliomyelitis had been prevented. In the late spring of 1960 an outbreak of poliomyelitis due to Type 1 virus developed in Berlin, where the previous public acceptance of Salk vaccine had been poor. Sabin vaccine had been used in the previous winter and early spring in East Berlin and between May 11th and 20th, 290,000 residents of West Berlin received a single dose of trivalent oral poliovirus vaccine prepared from Cox-Lederle strains. It was estimated that 80 per cent of school children and 56 per cent of pre-school children received the vaccine and altogether about half of the total 306,317 children aged 6 to 18 were vaccinated. No final report has yet appeared concerning the effect of this mass immunization though it is known that a number of cases of poliomyelitis subsequently occurred both in vaccinated and unvaccinated persons. ‘Thus of 50 cases which occurred from May 15th to December 31st, 16 were in persons who had previously received Cox vaccine within 30 days and 5 were in close contacts of vaccinated persons (Anderson, 1962). Yet the age distribution of these 21 cases was that usually experienced in recent years in West Germany. There was a further report that some of the vaccinated children experienced febrile reactions during the first week after receiving vaccine and that, during the second and third weeks, others developed encephalomyelitis (Henneberg, 1961). The origin of the illnesses in those who had been vaccinated was not discovered. A somewhat similar problem occurred in Miami, Florida, where Cox trivalent vaccine was used early in 1960 during a sporadic incidence of poliomyelitis. A few cases of poliomyelitis occurred in adults soon after the administration of vaccine, both in ‘those receiving vaccine and in contacts. (Erickson, Flipse, Menzin, Clayton, Markush and Hardy, 1960). This experi- ence was one reason for the caution exhibited by the Expert Committee on Poliomyelitis of the World Health Organisation. The Third Report of this Committee (1960) urged that particular care should be taken when introducing oral poliovirus vaccine in countries where poliomyelitis occurred in adults in