PhD Thesis - ResearchSpace@Auckland - The University of Auckland

expired to administer two doses of the vaccine and ‘catch-up’ with any who had
missed out first time. This ‘forced doctor-nurse teams to race against the clock. The
life of the vaccine expired just one day after the last child was injected’ and it is open
to question therefore, how much potency the vaccine had retained by this time. 97 In
the Palmerston North District the Medical Officer of Health complained that the
‘programme was a considerable strain on all concerned’. 98 Such was the haste
required that parents were barred when their child was immunised ‘as this might slow
down the work of vaccination teams to such an extent that the whole programme
might be endangered’. 99
This was not just confined to the 1956 programme. Medical Officers of Health
commented in 1958 that the immunisation programme had imposed ‘long hours and
the extra burden this has meant for many members of their field staff’. 100 The Health
Department echoed these sentiments, explaining that ‘all of us in this service are
looking forward to the end of the current year [1958] when (it is hoped) that the mass
immunisation of all children and adolescents will have been completed’. 101
These campaigns were carried out at the expense of other School Medical Service
duties such as post-primary inspections and BCG in schools. In 1958, 19,295 BCG
vaccinations were carried out, whereas in 1959 with the main polio immunisation
programme completed, the School Medical Service was able to allocate time to BCG
again and administered 34,669 vaccinations in that year. 102 As with diphtheria, the
polio immunisation campaign was hindered by a lack of personnel; there was a
shortage of Public Health nurses and in 1959 all districts reported they were
understaffed. 103
Another consequence of the polio immunisation programme was some loss of contact
between school medical officers and schools, as schools were now using
psychologists, speech therapists and others without first consulting the school medical
97 NZH, 10 January 1957.
98 MOH Palmerston North to DGH, 12 November 1956, H1 26133 144/17, ANZ, Wellington.
99 AS, 20 September 1956.
100 AJHR, 1959, H-31, p.19.
101 ibid., p.81.
102 AJHR, 1960, H-31, p.26.
103 ibid., p.12.
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