[Report 1959] / Medical Officer of Health, Edinburgh City.

  • Edinburgh (Scotland). City Council.
Date:
1959
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1959] / Medical Officer of Health, Edinburgh City. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    104/242 (page 104)
    A Press Conference was held by Councillor George Iiedderwick, Chairman of the Health Committee, on Friday the 30th October, and this was followed by local advertising in the Press linked to advertisements inserted by the Department of Health. Measures Taken. Clinic—The High Street clinic (Old Stamp Office Close) was open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, including the lunch hour, and on Thursdays and Fridays until 7.30 p.m. Saturday hours were from 9 a.m. to 12 noon as usual. Commerce and Industry—A letter from the Medical Officer of Health was circulated to all large undertakings inviting them to make use of mobile inoculation teams who would attend at their premises if numbers warranted this, e.g. more than 50 employees as a rule. Further Education Centres, evening institutes, day institutes and others were approached in a similar fashion. Dance Halls, Ice Rinks, Cinemas, cafes, concert halls were all most success- | fully approached and yielded a good return. Posters and leaflets were circularised to general practitioners, dentists, libraries, factories and shops. Specially designed posters were issued to the transport services and ante-natal clinics. Slips for pay packets were distributed in certain cases. Most of the publicity material plus records and filmlets were supplied by the \ courtesy of Pfizer Ltd. which considerably lessened the possible cost for local authorities. The final figures produced as a result of the campaign are reported elsewhere but it is worthy of note to appreciate that the apparent unwillingness of the under 26’s to come forward was merely a combination of idleness and thoughtlessness, j The numbers coming forward at the High Street clinic were small but the experi- ence was reversed when a team approached the public in, for example—a dance hall. When the facilities were brought to the youth there were no dissenters and all submitted willingly to inoculation. This apathy of youth would appear to be due to three causes. (a) No cases of polio were reported in the City in 1959. (b) The incidence of paralytic illness in the general population is small i and once again as in the cigarette cancer campaign we are trying to interest the people in the comparatively remote possibility of disablement. (c) The most difficult section of the public to deal with is acknowledged > to be the 16-25 year olds. This experience has been appreciated before when dealing with contact follow-up in cases of tuberculosis.