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Los Angeles Times
April 14, 1955
School children around the country cringed as mass inoculation programs against poliomyelitis began in 1955. The new vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk promised control of the virus, but communities like Los Angeles struggled to establish systems for financing, distributing, and administering the antipolio shots.
In a dress rehearsal for the inoculation of more than 200,000 school children with the new Salk antipolio vaccine, a 9-year-old girl yesterday received the first shot in the Los Angeles area.
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Karen Kain, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Aaron Kain of ... Whittier, was administered the primary injection by Dr. Harvey Shipper at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica.
The vaccine was a part of the first shipment to arrive here. It came aboard an American Airlines plane from Detroit and was quickly trucked to the Parke, Davis & Co. warehouse …
Karen cried briefly in anticipation of pain before Dr. Shipper injected her in the right arm. But she quickly smiled in pride when the simple operation had been accomplished.
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Karen's father is warehouse superintendent for the drug firm which made arrangements for the “rehearsal” inoculation here.
A large number of Salk vaccine shipments followed throughout the day from manufacturing firms in the East and Middle West. The Cutter Laboratories in Berkeley trucked a shipment here for transshipment by air to Phoenix.
Meanwhile, as preparations went forward for the free inoculation of all first and second-grade pupils in the county, beginning Monday, a County Medical Association committee on the vaccine made a series of recommendations relative to the distribution and administration of the Salk serum.
They suggested four priority classifications:
1—For preschool children above 12 months, all other children through the eighth grade and for expectant mothers.
2—For junior and senior high school students, all teenagers.
3—Adults in the 20-30 age bracket and infants less than one year old.
4—All of the remaining adult population.
Dr. David B. Kuris, chairman of the committee, said these priorities were set up in relationship to incidence of polio in the various age groups.
He said that the association has requested the pharmaceutical houses to allocate their supplies of the vaccine directly to doctors during this preliminary period when supply exceeds demand.
He said the doctors themselves would assume the responsibility to observe the priority classifications in administering the vaccine.
Dr. Kuris said the price of the vaccine to doctors would be from $4.20 to $4.50 for the series of three shots. List price, according to wholesale drug firms is $6.
The committee refused to discuss fees that would be charged for each patient. An independent survey indicated, however, that most physicians will charge $15 for the three shots.
“Physicians, realizing the public program involved,” said Dr. Kuris, “will charge a reasonable fee. They do not wish to profit. We feel we should have the same spirit as the men who developed the vaccine.”
He added that association doctors have volunteered to inoculate indigent persons free of charge at health centers and clinics, with the vaccine presumably to be provided without cost by various public agencies.
Dr. Kuris said he did not know how long it would be before the vaccine was made available to private physicians. He said he believed it would be relatively soon but probably, at first, in short supply ...
Medical men expressed no concern over Dr. Salk's suggestion that only two injections may be required, rather than three.
Dr. Kuris said they are concerned now only with giving the first shot. There is plenty of time, he explained, for the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis to give an official pronouncement regarding the administration of a third shot.
At a meeting called by Board of Supervisor Chairman Herbert C. Legg in the office of County Manager Arthur J. Will it was revealed that another 200,000 children of kindergarten age will be inoculated with the vaccine next September and thereafter all youngsters through the age of 10 may receive the protective serum with consent of parents ...
The first segment of vaccine recipients in the two lower grades and possibly other children to be served later will be inoculated free of charge. At the same time serum in up-to-now-undetermined amounts will be released to physicians through established drug outlets.
Legg announced that he would strive for free inoculations of all children unable to afford the privately administered doses. Will at the same time emphasized current difficulties and uncertainties besetting health authorities in the Salk serum program.
“There is no possibility of providing a complete immunization for all persons who might want it now,” Will said, “Only the first and second-grade children will be considered at present.
“One of the problems, of course, is the probable temporary limitation of vaccine. How extensive this limitation is remains to be seen. Another hurdle is the lack of suitable and proper types of injection apparatus such as needles, syringes, sterilizers, needle cleaners and the like.
“There will be the mechanical necessity of staffing and equipping several hundred facilities within county borders in which to establish clinics.
“No plan has as yet been worked out with the medical profession as a whole.
“Financing of mass innoculations by public health officers so as to include children in age brackets other than the first and second-graders also is still to be worked out. It would require an estimated $1,650,000 to pay for additional vaccine alone used in this county.”
Will accented that the first series of innoculations is being paid for out of funds of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, money contributed largely by the nation's children themselves through the March of Dimes. Local and State governments may pay for some of the added cases.
Will pointed out there is a relatively high incidence of polio in older individuals, particularly those between 20 and 30. Eventually, he predicted, there will come varying demands for vaccination from persons of all ages ...
Source: Los Angeles Times, April 14, 1955.
Appears in
Salk, Jonas Edward; Medicine; Public Health; Immunization; Poliomyelitis
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