Anyone here remember the mass polio vaccination?

I hope the anitvacc people see these pictures and realise how things are,in a different way, but ventilators instead of iron lungs

I remember the frightening pictures of iron lungs and being warned not to play near water. What happened to all those poor youngsters - we had one girl at school with calipers on her leg but I was never aware of others.

felice my GP dad once gave a whooping cough vaccination to a young patient who went on to develop fits and was never the same again. He was quite haunted by it and didn't want us to give our children the whooping cough vaccine.
DS had the MMR but went on to catch measles, mumps and rubella over the next year. Must have been a dud batch!!

I once stood up to my GP who thought my DD should not have the Whooping Cough vaccine.
My X is a Grand Mal epileptic, and it was thought wrongly that the vaccine caused Autism, and epilepsy could make the reaction worse.
I pointed out that X's Epilepsy was the result of a minor spinal accident when he was a child so irrelevant.
The GP was stroppy with me for months but DD was fine.
I will be getting the Covid jab on the 11th of January, a district nurse is coming at 14.00pm.

My uncle had polio and wore a caliper all his life. He'd been very ill though. I well remember my Granny telling me about the first time she noticed something wrong with him. She was a tough old thing but I'll never forget the look in her eyes and the wobble in her voice as she talked about it. He did live to a good old age after an active life but, at the time, finding her wee boy had this dread disease must have been awful for poor Granny.

I think I had the first polio vaccine by injection and then boosters by sugar lump. My mother would never let us play in the paddling pools in parks as she said they were a polio risk.
One neighbour's little boy had polio and wore callipers. His mother did not have it easy as his sister started school in my class and after a few weeks was sent away to a special school (I think we called them backward schools then) so bother her children had a disability.
I worked with someone in the 90s who had had polio and he had to give up work as he developed post polio syndrome. Prior to that he had had years of being perfectly fit.

This current vaccine will capture the imagination all because of William Shakespeare! I'm afraid Margaret Keenan's name may be less memorable. She looked amazing I thought.

For anyone interested in the 1961 mass vaccination in Hull here's the Pathe news broadcast www.youtube.com/watch?v=W88DcouLijY

I'm needle phobic and faint when I have to have one. But will have the Covid one (just wish it was one jab instead of two).

I can't remember having any jabs as a child in the 50s but I know I had every available immunisation. I remember, vaguely, the smallpox outbreak in the 60s but have no scar to show I had the vaccine. I remember, very vividly, the earlier polio outbreaks that worried my parents so much, with the pictures of calipers, wheelchairs and iron lungs.

I had the BCG jab in school when I was about 13 years old. There's some rumour of that jab offering some protection against Covid-19 but I don't know what happened to that theory. TB is still endemic in many countries, and visitors from some of them are required to provide a certificate to show they don't have it. TB is endemic in some EU countries but I think freedom of movement has allowed people to visit here without certification. Bulgaria and Romania are EU countries with active TB levels.

My sisters and I all had the usual childhood diseases including chicken pox and measles but I didn't get mumps. I was glad when the MMR catch up was offered for my older two. The youngest had the jabs as a baby.

Remembering the fairly recent outbreaks of meningitis among students, it's great that vaccines are available against many strains of that dangerous disease too.

I'll be having the Covid-19 jabs as soon as I'm called, unless they are reluctant to give it to me. I recently had a nasty reaction to the pneumonia jab but I'm guessing the covid one will be more akin to the flu jab, which I've never reacted to.

Yes, I remember the polio vaccination. It came on a sugar lump.

There was a vaccination centre about a mile from the school and we were walked down there, class by class in a rigidly maintained croccodile

I was born 1945 and had no vaccinations in childhood at all until I was 20 and went overseas to live so there couldn’t have been any mandatory rulings
My parents never had any vaccinations until in their 70 s they started having the annual flu vaccine
I m sure I ll have the Covid injection at some point but don’t want it as yet I m not at all convinced we ve bought the best vaccine

I was born in 1951 and remember the polio vaccination campaign in 1957, we were among the first children to be given the sugar lumps instead of a jab.

I was vaccinated against smallpox before going to school in 1956, I thought all children in Scotland were, but perhaps Daddy was just cautious being a doctor.

A girl at school who was three years older than me had had polio and wore calipers.

BCG was done at school, but when I moved to Denmark in 1975 you had to have a chest X ray every year if you studied,, worked with children or were a medical professional. Workers in large firms were checked for TB yearly too, and in smaller firms every second year.

I was re-vaccinated twice, as tests for TB always come back positive on me for some reason that no-one has ever satisfactorily explained.

I haven't had TB, nor had any of my parents or grandparents.

I had them all as well, smallpox, TB polio etc. In later life I also had hepatitis B jab and regular tetanus shots. The group of people I worked with were more prone to these diseases. I don't need any more tetanus shots now as I am protected for life they tell me.
I shall be having the Covid vaccine, there should be plenty available here as the French are generally anti vaxxers. They say that only 46% of French people will have the vaccine.

I remember having the Polio jab very clearly. We went as a family to the Dr., my brother and I were done first then my mum. My dad was last and came over all peculiar and had to sit down for ages. Luckily in those days the Dr was a family friend but I recall mum being very embarrassed about it all.

I was born in 1944 but don’t really remember a polio vaccination. I remember. BCG ? In secondary school. Was that for TB ? When I was at college there were three students in my year with callipers.

I suppose I must have had the polio vaccination, but I don’t remember it. In my early teens it was discovered I had what was called “a shadow on the lung”, in other words the beginnings of TB. It wasn’t active, and I wasn’t infectious, but nevertheless had a year off school, mostly in bed, and streptomycin injections every day. I have fond memories of the lovely district nurse who did them. So you see, a few more injections would have been barely noticeable to me.

My parents were quite scared by my illness, but I never was. I quite enjoyed it! I think they were also a bit ashamed, because to them TB was associated with poverty and poor diet, neither of which applied to us.

I remember our class being let out of school to go down to the local health clinic for the polio jab. It was near the seafront and we sloped off afterwards onto the beach.

Yes! I had the sugar cube, and I remember my mother being very excited for me to have it, as she knew people who had suffered with polio, and was happy that I would be protected. (I assume the rest of the family had the vaccine as well??)

In the late sixties we lived in a boarding school and our GP suggested that our two small children (2 and 4) had the very new measles immunisation. One reacted badly to it, which suggests that he would have had a bad dose of measles. Now of course part of the MMR jab, not invented then, so we had mumps and rubella as well as chicken pox. I have no patience at all with the very selfish people who rely on other people being vaccinated in order to protect them. There are enough people who cannot be vaccinated without adding the ill informed and self centred to that number.

I am genuinely curious as to why if the vaccine was developed by the Germans and the Americans why their own people did not get it first, why us?

Granny23, my father, aged 16, was at the Sutton Coldfield scouting jamboree. It was the fiftieth anniversary of the movement. My son, aged fourteen, was at the Chelmsford jamboree in 2007, which was the hundredth anniversary of scouting.
That aside, we always had all the vaccines offered, except for the rubella vaccine, as l had had German Measles about six months prior to this. Even so, l had my immunity checked for this when l got married and would have had the vaccine if I had needed it. My mother had had the smallpox vaccine during the scare that was mentioned earlier. I had the vaccine two or three times but it would not take. When l was eight l had chickenpox very badly and l remember the doctor coming to the house and making sure it was not smallpox. Thankfully it wasn't but l was away from school for about a month.

I had every jab going when I was a child - I don't think my parents even considered refusing.

I can understand and sympathise with people who are nervous about having the covid vaccine. However the ones that annoy me are those who spread unfounded rumours about it and other vaccines.

Locally there is a rumour that the flu jab being given to 2 and 3 year olds has live covid virus in it ? - as a result the takeup of the flu jab for small children has dropped off considerably.

I’m now wondering what has happened to all the polio victims we used to see? Many of them in callipers back then. They would be our age now, but I never see a pensioner in callipers...Did they eventually grow stronger again? Or have they ALL passed away? Interested to know.......

I remember the summer of '59 when we were suddenly all sent for a polio booster. I think the full programme was (by then) 4 lots of vaccine. I had another booster when taking my first child for her shot too as it's a live vaccine and apparently could be excreted and there was a nappy-change risk. Very slight, but all the same.
My grandfather was an anti-vaxxer but my mother disagreed and I had the diphtheria shots, but never the smallpox one. I'm very keen on getting the Covid one - bring it on, as soon as possible!