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Show - 3 - " The men sometimes met with mistrust because anything really free was almost unheard of. Some village elders were very cooperative, ethers were evasive and tried to pass them on quickly to the next village. In some places recently afflicted by famine it was very difficult to buy any food at all. On windy days little could be done. At the end of ten days hardly more than a thousand vaccinations had been done, and during the second ten days only fifteen hundred more. By that time the object of the campaign became better known and the reports of successful "takes" got abroad, with the result that a great increase in popularity was noticed throughout the whole county. The average daily number of vaccinations became three and four times the number at first, and invitations were received to go back to the villages at first visited. The period during which it is the local custom to immunize against smallpox drew to a close two months after the campaign started, and work was discontinued on May 15th. Of the 521 villages in the county all were visited and vaccinations done in all but 65. It was surprising how few reports came to the field workers of failure to "take," and so far as we have been informed only one bad secondary infection occurred. The country population seemed well pleased with the work. For most of them it was their first demonstration of vaccination. Inoculation is common but there is good reason to expect that it will be replaced by vaccination if such a campaign can be repeated yearly. The population of the county is said to be 250,000. A birth rate of 30 per 1000, and an infant mortality of say 500 per 1000 under one year, fair estimates for this area, would give an addition of 3750 non-immunes a year old each year. The tables appended show 8240 vaccinations done, 3.3% of the whole population. 5095 of these were upon non-immunes, somewhat more than the annual increase in this class of the population. This work, annually repeated, ought to give adequate protection against smallpox. |
