Sugar lump vaccine (1961)

[Music] this film tells the story of how almost the entire population of the city of Kingston upon H was vaccinated against poliomyelitis when when the outbreak began there was no indication of how serious it might become yet within a week of the first case being notified 25 people had been struck down by the disease Hull was facing a crisis on October the 12th 1961 the minister of Health announced that the vaccine could be used in the city thus Hull became the first city in Western Europe to fight polio with the new oral vaccine developed by Dr Sabin this was the most sudden and most serious outbreak of polio in this country for over 2 years and the job of fighting the disease fell on the city's Health Department This Is How They tackled it polio outbreak that was the ominous headline which faced the city of Hull on October the 5th 1961 during the following week newspapers in Hull and throughout the country pinpointed the alarming spread of the disease the task facing the City Health Department was enormous speed was vital the medical officer of Health set the target 300,000 men women and children to be vaccinated in one week the first job was to tell the people of how how and when they could get the vaccine at press conferences up to the minute news was given and soon the location of clinix was known in Hull and the neighboring areas 12 new cases of polio on the eve of the campaign gave it a grave impetus advertisements were placed in the local papers giving Clinic times and places posters were prominently displayed in the city's shops by noon of the first day 150,000 people had been vaccinated supplies of the vaccine were quickly running out the Royal Air Force stepped in an aircraft from ARF station lenfield flew to manston Airfield near to the factory to obtain these urgently needed further supplies [Music] this was a cargo which received VIP treatment packed in special containers lined with dry ice the vaccine was carefully and quickly transferred to a waiting van [Music] from the airport the van drove straight to the City Health Department the staff had been alerted to receive the new [Music] supplies here the crates were unpacked Special Care was taken to ensure that in the deicing process the inner containers with the vaccine were not damaged if the vaccine had been kept in the containers packed with dry ice it would have remained frozen solid for another 3 days once it's removed it THS quickly but retains its potency for about 7 [Music] Days in its frozen State the vaccine is in concentrated form before use it must be diluted this is a simple [Music] procedure first the vials are spread out on a table spacing them well apart to allow a free circulation of air at room [Music] temperature and then they're left to Thor [Music] when they thought out the Caps are removed from the vials the rubber seals are swabbed with [Music] acetone now we come to the only part of this vaccination Campaign which requires a needle disposable sterile syringes are prepared to inject sterile saline into the vaccine [Music] the saline is injected into the vial the other needle pushed through the rubber cap allows The Escape of air and facilitates the process of dilution [Music] now the vaccine is ready for use the diluted vaccine is repacked into the original boxes for distribution to the [Music] clinics in a room below the nerve center of the campaign from here supplies of sugar syrup and vaccination cards went out members of the health department staff answered a constant stream of telephone calls and took hourly progress reports from the clinics on their vaccine stocks [Music] where necessary the ambulance station shortwave radio was used to order the transfer of stalks between [Music] clinics this Clinic was in one of the 40 schools used for the purpose during the hull campaign and here the vials of diluted vaccine were opened for immediate use [Music] a handful of sugar lumps and two drops per [Music] lump the Lord mayor of Hull and other members of the corporation took their sugar lump vaccine and obviously enjoyed it 300,000 cubes of sugar were donated for the campaign by a well-known sugar [Music] company for the very young the under fives the vaccine was given in a teaspoonful of [Music] syrup than the sugar treatment two drops of vaccine make the dose with syrup [Music] theoh made one special request bring your own spoon a simple point but one which did much to speed up the process by cutting out any need for constant washing unlike most vaccination campaigns there were no tear or Tantrums the children with a superb variety of Expressions took their syrup and enjoyed it with no idea that they and their parents were making medical [Music] history administration brought its problems they were solved by a system of record cards collated and completed at the vaccination centers by members of the the health department and volunteer workers even the mayor got one cards were made out for four different categories and in four different colors for school children and the under fives for adults who had not received any sulk vaccine for adults wholly or partially immunized with sulk vaccine for non-residents of [Music] Hull the people of Hull looked on the polio vaccinations as a family affair for old and young alike while mother and son went to the clinic father got his sugar lump at the factory or [Music] office on leaving the tinic everyone was given a form to hand to their own doctor telling him they'd had the vaccine voluntary helpers like this St John's ambulance Brigade worker were quick to answer the appeal for help in all more than 2,000 members of the wvs Red Cross civil defense and other volun organizations came forward a strict rotor system was arranged for every class at the city's schools this meant that lessons were barely affected and it also avoided cues to speed up things even further parents were asked to complete the card authorizing vaccination for their children beforehand [Music] for the children it was a peculiar grown-up game but not for the [Music] nurses as fast as they prepared the sugar lumps they were gobbled up [Music] in factories 2 emergency clinics were set up as with the schools a rotor system meant that lost working hours were kept to a minimum this operator will be back at his workbench in a few minutes and there's no sore arm to worry about [Music] protection comes with a few extra calories but you need the vaccine on the [Music] sugar department stores make ideal sites for vaccination [Music] centers it was an unusual break during the normal shopping [Music] trip but it wasn't just Choppers who used the facilities anyone could come into the stores usually there was a short wait then the formalities of the vaccination cards to be completed before the sugar lump with its vaccine was handed over over 15,000 people got the vaccine in one store a tribute to the excellent cooperation between private Enterprise and the local Authority for most of H citizens the vaccination campaign meant little disruption to their normal life but for the public health department it had meant many long hours of work how did the campaign work out a month after the first case was notified I met the medical officer of Health for Hall doctor as medical officer of Health foral you've been the director of the first mass immunization campaign with Sabine oral vaccine to be used in Western Europe what was the object of this campaign and do you say you've succeeded we'd hope to give as many people as possible in Hull this vaccine and I think that when I tell you that we give it to 96.3% of the population I think we can claim fairly that we have succeeded we succeeded because of the tremendous response of the people of Hell to our appeals to come forward to receive the vaccine what were you really trying to achieve we were attempting to break the outbreak we weren't attempting to vaccinate the people of H against all forms of polio our primary aim and object was to break this outbreak the organization of such a campaign must have been a tremendous problem yes it was but my task was made very much easier by the tremendous enthusiasm of my staff as soon as they realized that they had a major problem on their hands they all all rallied and I found amongst many of my staff qualities that I didn't realize was were were there we were aided of course by the Magnificent response of the various voluntary organizations in the city who rallied to our help so a great many people were involved in this campaign you must have had a meeting early on to coordinate all their efforts who else apart from yourself was chiefly concerned at the beginning the chairman of the health committee the chairman of the local medical committee and the consultant infectious diseases go with senior officers of my department we made the primary decisions and then it was left to the department to run the campaign at all the subsequent meetings we had in the director of the wvs who was of invaluable assistance to me throughout the whole campaign other medical officers of Health might well be faced with a problem like this what special points of advice would you give them about administrative problems to ensure that there was very Speedy Communications between the various centers are set up and some Central Point and overabundance of Transport preferably radio controlled the necessity to keep the general practitioners in the area fully informed of all that's going on and to have a bacteriologist either from the public health laboratory service or from the local hospital available to assist in the ution of the vaccine did you have to resist a strong tendency to panic all sorts of people would like you to make hasty decisions but it's up to the medical loss of Health not to be panicked and it's up to him too to ensure that the public don't get a sense of panic otherwise the campaign might get out of hand any other special points you noticed yes we had some difficulty with the droppers that were supplied they were supposed to supply .1 ml in two drops but in effect they didn't and it's a point that medical officer of Health should take note of because in planning their campaign and the amount of vaccine they require it can materially affect the supplies of the vaccine did you divide the people into categories we had four categories in half children under the age of 15 people over 15 those who had had some Sal vaccine those who had none and then we had a fourth category people living outside the city did you record these categories on cards these were all recorded in cards but that was one of the weaknesses of our system and I'm sure that before anyone attempts a campaign such as we had in Hull they should try to devise some punch card system because it will make the task of counting the cards and the separation of the various groups very much easier did many people come in from outside the city for vaccination of the 360,000 people we vaccinated over 60,000 were not our residents so in any future outbreak in a city the number coming from outside might be quite considerable I can well imagine in some of the large conations it would be a real headache to the medical officer of Health who was whose campaign it was did you have many doctors involved in the campaign we had all the the medical staff from my own Department the idea there was that they should go around the clinics and answer questions of from people who would come up and say is it all right for me to have the vaccine but in effect once the campaign got going we found that they weren't really necessary because more or less everybody who could stand on their two feet were given the vaccine well you must have found that nurses were very necessary how many of them did you have we had 145 nurses many from my own staff but lots of nurses who had retired or who were married phoned in and offered their services and and of course we readily accepted it you used a number of mobile clinics as well as the static clinics at schools hospitals factories and so on how did the mobile clinics work out they did excellent work they went to factories and shops where we thought it would be profitable from the number point of view to send a mobile team and we had Atmos cooperation from Factory management and from the shops too you call the mobile teams I prefer that name because they were it was a team that went out to the various factories and uh shops I understand you use type 2 vaccine in this first campaign does this give long protection the type two vaccine which we use will offer a long-term protection against type two and a shortterm protection against types one and three briefly doctor what conclusions have you come to about this new oral vaccine this new oral vaccine has two main uses the first to use as we did in an emergency to break and out break and secondly to use it as a long-term measure to protect the community as a whole against poliomyelitis