POLIO SHOTS SET FOR LOCAL SCHOOLS

"Test Clinics" Slated Here During May and June

The four elementary schools of the Mamaroneck School System will become “test clinics” during May and June for a polio vaccine campaign conducted by the Westchester County Health Department.

A favorable decision was granted Tuesday night by the Board of Education to the epartment’s request to set up the clinics in the Chatsworth Avenue, Murray Avenue, Mamaroneck Avenue and Central Schools.

During the same period, similar clinics will be held throughout Westchester County to vaccinate children in Grades one to three, ages six to nine, with the vaccine recently developed by Dr. Jonas E. Salk, Research Professor of Bacteriology at the University of Pittsburgh, on a research grant of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. The clinics are also under the sponsorship of NFIP.

Effectiveness Test

The purpose of the study is to determine the effectiveness of the trial polio vaccine in protecting children against paralytic polio.

Meeting at the Mamaroneck Avenue school, the Board listened to a tape recording of a talk yesterday by Dr. William A. Holla of the County Health Department, before the Parents-Teachers Council at the school, outlining the procedure of polio vaccine. Several Council members also attended the Board meeting.

Dr. Holla said the new vaccine is absolutely say and that the tests are to be given so that foundation officials may be “absolutely certain of its effectiveness.”

“The vaccines work as shown by tests given monkeys,” he said “They are sure to work on humans.”

The vaccine itself is composed of killed virus of three types which have been grown in test two cultures of monkey kidney tissues. The virus has been killed by exposure to formalin and is prepared a watery solution.

Dr. Holla pointed out that “three injections of the vaccine will be given.” The first will be followed a one week after by a second. A “booster shot” will be injected four weeks later, he explained.

“There is practically no reaction to the shots,” He said.

Murray Avenue School students (left to right) Joan (Rankin) Stankus, Bruce Schwabach, Mandy Sullivan, Nancy (Sether) Masterson, Joan Apt, Barbara Strauss

Before being administered, the vaccine passes through three independent series of safety tests. These are performed by the commercial manufacturer, by Dr. Salk, and by the Biological Standards Division of the National Institutes of Health - the branch of the U. S. Public Health Service which licenses and controls the manufacture of all biological preparations.

The Department plans to use the physicians and nurses from each of the schools to give the shots and handle the records. Private volunteers are expected to aid in “this absolutely scientific study.”

Not Compulsory

Parents will be sent consent slips to fill out, granting the Department permission to make the tests on their child or children. No child is required to take the injections.

Results of the clinical tests are not expected to be known until next year. “No one will know,” Dr. Holla said ,“whether the vaccine works until the test is over.” The vaccine is different from gamma globulin which contains antibiotics from someone else’s blood, temporarily of use if given that the right time. The vaccine contains the disease itself which, when injected, causes the body to build up its own longer-lasting antibiotics to fight paralytic polio. The trial vaccine contains all three types of polio virus in a “killed” stages. It will not cause the disease but is expected to stimulate antibody production.

Good for About a Year

Dr. Holla said that “the shots should be good for from nine months to a year, after which booster shots would have to be taken.”

Mrs. Lewis Fribourg told the Board, following the recorded talk, that the clinics were “open to all.” Parents have the right to refuse.