Do I Need To Have A Booster Polio Vaccination?
Polio seems to have returned and cases are rising in North-East London, where I live.
I was vaccinated using an injecton in the 1950s, so it must have been the Salk vaccine.
In today’s Sunday Times, there is an article, which is entitled A Little More Vaccination: Elvis Presley And The Race To Beat Polio, where this is said.
Sabin’s live vaccine could be swallowed as a drop on a sugar cube. This mimics the route that the virus takes naturally, entering the body’s gut. Salk’s dead virus had to be injected. Most importantly, it turned out that Sabin’s vaccine could give lifelong immunity, while Salk’s only protected for a few years.
As it is more than a few years, since I was vaccinated, do I need a booster?
The Ipswich Lockdown
Around 1960, my parents bought a second home in Felixstowe, where they eventually retired some years later. This memory could have been earlier, as we were always going to Felixstowe, often staying in the Ordnance Hotel.
In those days, there was no Southern by-pass to the town, so you had to go around the old by-pass, which now passes the current Ipswich Hospital before taking the Felixstowe Road from St. Augustine’s roundabout.
We used to go to the house in Felixstowe most weekends and I can remember one trip, where instead of going around the town, we went through it past the old County Hall and up Spring Road.
I can remember looking out of the MG Magnette (registration number 676 RME) and seeing that the streets of Ipswich were completely deserted.
The reason was that the town had been hit by an outbreak of polio and people weren’t venturing out.
Strangely, I can’t find anything on the Internet about this polio outbreak!
The Anonymous Widower 