Atlanta Daily World

Plans Move Along For Polio Shots; Final Word In April
Each county health department in Georgia is being supplied this week with a complete kit of information on plans for carrying out this year's program for giving a series of three polio shots to first and second graders.

The information comes from the National Polio Foundation and the Georgia Department of Public Health.

The kit contains the complete story of the vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas E. Salk of the University of Pittsburgh and used in 44 states last year to determine its effectiveness. Also included are questions and answers and news announcements for use by newspapers radio stations and television stations. Other items are a procedure manual, request forms to be signed by parents who wish their children to receive the vaccine and bulletins for use by school teachers.

Parents will receive the forms in addition to a letter from the local health department explaining what the polio program is and what to do with the forms.

Dr T F Sellers, state health director, said he wished to continue to remind all parents that final reports of the effectiveness of the Salk vaccine will not be complete until April. No vaccine will be sent out before that time, and it will be sent only if a study now being completed at the University of Michigan shows that it prevented the children who received shots last spring from being infected with paralytic polio during the 1954 summer polio season that followed.

Vaccine will be supplied to the Georgia Health Department by the National Polio Foundation.

Dr. Sellers and William Perry, Georgia representative for the Foundation, explained further the reasons for restricting the shots this year to first and second graders.

These children were selected because polio occurs more often among them than in older school children and because a successful prevention program must reach large groups of children.

The Salk vaccine, said Dr. Sellers and Mr. Perry, will be available to private physicians through regular commercial channels for parents who wish to have children other than first and second graders receive the shots.