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The supposed apathy shown towards diphtheria by certain sections of the British public was largely overcome by the 1960s – or, at least, immunisation rates had improved to such an extent that the Ministry of Health was no longer concerned about widespread diphtheria epidemics. Yet it did not have the same successes with smallpox vaccination. The problem of low rates of infant vaccination and childhood revaccination among the population remained a continual source of irritation for the Ministry. In the government's favour, the success of
Indigenous smallpox had been eliminated from Britain in the 1930s, reducing its threat to the day-to-day lives of British people. The public had, however, come to fear a new disease which first reached epidemic proportions in 1947 – poliomyelitis. From that year onwards, regular outbreaks occurred during the “polio season” each summer. No cure was ever found. The only thing authorities could do was provide treatment for acute symptoms and continue research efforts into a preventative vaccine. By the end of the 1960s, the number of annual
decades. 19 If there was a will for greater protection, state planning and modern science appeared to offer a means for its provision. Although much would later be made of the “technocratic age” of the 1950s and 1960s, it was in the 1940s that the British state would begin to take greater control of once-private industries in the name of efficiency and accountability. 20 Indeed, it was through the establishment of monitoring statistics during this time that the Ministry of Health was able to monitor the apathy that it would see in the 1950s and how it would come to
of Health and to the general public that vaccination could be an effective public health tool. Building on advertising and education techniques employed in other jurisdictions in the inter-war period, the lack of compulsion in the diphtheria immunisation campaign gave it credibility. These new health tools – born from modern vaccinology and without the baggage of the imposition and unpleasant nature of smallpox vaccination – could now be exploited. During the 1950s and 1960s, improvements in research and manufacturing techniques led to new vaccines which could be
Part II of this book signifies a shift in emphasis for the British vaccination programme. Some of this was due to maturity. By the 1970s, many of the fundamental questions about which vaccines to include and whether the state had a role in protecting the British public had been answered. Citizens had come to accept vaccination for themselves and demand it of others. Other changes were due to political and historical circumstances. Whereas MOHs had played a key role in the administration of immunisation from the 1940s to the 1960s, these
by the majority of the population in the 1950s and 1960s. Polio vaccine was hailed a modern marvel; and yet both the government and the public had an awkward relationship with it until the oral vaccine became widely available. And even at the height of the pertussis vaccine crisis, immunisation rates for other diseases remained relatively robust. While this chapter has used the language and framework of hesitancy, this concept has been developed by researchers for investigating present-day public health problems. It must be historicised. It
making of health conscious citizens’, Critical Public Health , 22:1 (2012), 99–105; Frank Huisman and Harry Oosterhuis, ‘The politics of health and citizenship: Historical and contemporary perspectives’, in Frank Huisman and Harry Oosterhuis (eds), Heath and Citizenship: Political Cultures of Health in Modern Europe (London: Pickering and Chatto 2014), pp. 1–40. 35 On these themes see Petersen and Lupton, The New Public Health; Virginia Berridge and Alex Mold, ‘Professionalisation, new social movements and voluntary action in the 1960s and