§ Mr. Viantasked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether the Knightswood Hospital has any records of the vaccination of its nursing and other staff, and on what dates were the nurses and the laundrymaid who died from smallpox vaccinated; and whether the 17 year old trainee nurse who died was actually on the staff of the hospital.
§ Mr. Viantasked the Secretary of State for Scotland how many of the hospital staff who died from smallpox at Glasgow had been vaccinated but bore no soar; and whether the laundrymaid who died had been employed at the hospital during the period when all the staff were required to be vaccinated.
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Mr. McNeilThe hospital staff records include notes of any known successful or attempted vaccinations. These records, together with subsequent special enquiries, have yielded the following particulars about the three student nurses and the laundrymaid who died during the recent smallpox outbreak:
- Nurse (aged 20); vaccination attempted thrice in infancy.
- Nurse (aged 19); vaccination attempted in 1942.
- Nurse (aged 17); vaccination attempted in infancy, and again a few months before joining the staff of the hospital in September, 1949.
- Laundrymaid (aged 20); vaccination not attempted before the recent outbreak. At no time was vaccination a routine requirement for laundrymaids in the hospital.
None of those persons bore any scar, which I am advised is always found after a successful vaccination.
§ Mr. Viantasked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he will make inquiries into the death of James Taylor, 15-year old pupil at the school at Gordon-stoun, Morayshire, who died on 4th May a few weeks after vaccination undergone as a condition of returning to school from his home at St. Olaf Street, Lerwick; and into the death of Emily Sutherland, Greenside Street, Provenmill, aged nine years, who died on 4th April in a school playground four hours after being vaccinated at a Glasgow clinic.
§ Mr. Viantasked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether the doctors who performed the vaccinations during the recent smallpox outbreak in Glasgow issued certificates showing whether the vaccinations had been successful.
§ Mr. Viantasked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he will give an assurance that the people who were vaccinated in Glasgow and Hamilton during the recent smallpox scare had their vaccinations inspected a week later so that certificates could be issued showing the kind of reaction, and whether the vaccinations had been successful.
Mr. McNeilI am informed that by no means all the persons who were vaccinated returned to have their reactions inspected. Where reactions indicating successful 143W vaccination were found on inspection, or reported by general practitioners, these were noted in the local authority records, but certificates to individuals were not normally issued.
§ Mr. Viantasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what tests his medical officials applied in deciding that none of the six persons who died in Glasgow from smallpox during the recent outbreak had been successfully vaccinated; and whether any of them had been vaccinated as contacts.
Mr. McNeilThe test is that the person has no vaccination scar. Four of the six persons who died were vaccinated as contacts when already in the late stages of incubating smallpox; the other two were vaccinated on admission to the smallpox hospital.