Bradford smallpox outbreak of 1962
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| Bradford smallpox outbreak of 1962 | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Bradford Children's Hospital, where the index case was admitted | |
| Location | Bradford, UK |
| First reported | 11 January 1962 |
| Index case | Nine year old girl from Karachi |
| Arrival date | 16 December 1961 |
| Date | 1961-12 February 1962 |
Type | Smallpox |
| Confirmed cases | 14 |
Deaths | Six |
An outbreak of smallpox in Bradford in 1962 first came to attention on 11 January 1962, when a cook from the children's hospital in Bradford presented with an unexplained fever and was found to have changes in their blood similar to another sick person at the nearby St Luke's Hospital, both samples appearing compatible with smallpox. The index case was later discovered to be a nine-year old girl who arrived in the UK on 16 December 1961 from Karachi, Pakistan, where there was an ongoing epidemic of smallpox.
The outbreak resulted in 14 cases of smallpox, contact tracing of over 1,400 individuals, vaccination of around 250,000 people and six deaths directly due to the disease. It was officially declared over on 12 February 1962.
Background
Between December 1961 and April 1962, authorities became aware of an ongoing epidemic of smallpox in Karachi, where people were able to depart via charter flight and arrive in the UK, where surveillance at airports was enhanced only following the first imported case.[1][2] At the time, Bradford was a significant destination for those seeking work in mills and factories. Of the city's 298,000 people, 1,000 were West Indian, 2,000 from India and 7,500 from Pakistan. In Roberta Bivins' account of the epidemic published in 2015, she described Bradford as having "prided itself on a reputation for tolerance and good intercommunal relations".[3]
On 10 January 1962, a case of smallpox was confirmed in a man who had arrived at Heathrow Airport, London, on Christmas Day. Another suspected case arrived from Pakistan on 19 December 1961. On 1 January 1962, a contact of the first case arrived in Bradford and was immediately isolated. Consequently, in preparedness, a local hospital was designated for further possible cases of smallpox.[4]
Outbreak
On 11 January 1962, shortly after being appointed consultant pathologist at St Luke's Hospital in Bradford, Derrick Tovey received two almost identical severely abnormal blood samples from two unrelated people who had been admitted with unexplained fevers to two different hospitals, unusually on the same day. One case was a cook from the Children's Hospital, who was under observation at the Leeds Road Fever Hospital, the other was a man who had been admitted to Tovey's own hospital, St Luke's, and who died shortly after the blood was taken. Tovey described the samples as showing "a mild anaemia, leucopenia, thrombocytopenia and a striking blood film with nucleated red cells, myelocytes, fragmenting granulocytes and vacuolation of the protoplasm, condensed nuclear bodies and atypical plasma cells and some Türck cells". The findings were similar to a description of smallpox in a textbook dated 1925. After examining the man in the mortuary and without waiting for laboratory confirmation, the diagnosis was assumed and the regional medical officer convened a committee.[4][5] Five children from a ward at the Bradford Children's Hospital were shortly suspected of having smallpox. One of these children had already been transferred to Wharfedale Hospital for observation. The result was that four hospitals were initially quarantined.[6]
The following day the index case was discovered to be a nine-year old girl who arrived in the UK on 16 December 1961 from Karachi.[7] Her international vaccination certificates were up-to-date and when she was admitted to A1 ward at Bradford's Children's Hospital, her diagnosis of malaria masked any suspicion of smallpox. She subsequently died on 30 December 1961, following having had contact with several other children on the ward. During that Christmas period, the ward had been visited by the cook and the man from St Luke's had a child as an inpatient at the hospital. The pathologist who performed the postmortem at the Bradford Royal Infirmary on the nine-year old girl had not been vaccinated, contracted the illness and died within a few days, leaving the Royal Infirmary as the fifth hospital to be quarantined.[2][4]
Response and outcome
Bradford's medical officer of health at the time was John Douglas.[6][8] Contacts were given vaccination and kept under surveillance. Neighbouring authorities were notified within 48 hours.[2]
The outbreak resulted in 14 cases of smallpox, contact tracing of over 1,400 individuals, vaccination of around 250,000 people over five days and six deaths directly due to the disease. It was officially declared over on 12 February 1962.[2][3]
References
- ^ Pennington, Hugh (2003). "Smallpox and bioterrorism" (PDF). Bulletin of the World Health Organization. 81: 765.
- ^ a b c d George Pollock (30 March 2012). An Epidemiological Odyssey: The Evolution of Communicable Disease Control. Springer Science & Business Media. pp. 53–. ISBN 978-94-007-3998-7.
- ^ a b Bivins, Roberta E. (2015). "3. Smallpox, 'Social Threats", and Citizenship, 1961-1966". Contagious Communities: Medicine, Migration, and the NHS in Post-war Britain. Oxford University Press. pp. 140–147. ISBN 978-0-19-872528-2.
- ^ a b c Tovey, Derrick (May 2004). "The Bradford smallpox outbreak in 1962: a personal account" (PDF). Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. 97 (5): 244–247. doi:10.1258/jrsm.97.5.244. ISSN 0141-0768. PMC 1079469. PMID 15121819.
- ^ Pallen, Mark (2018). "10. Bradford 1962". The Last Days of Smallpox; Tragedy in Birmingham. pp. 29–32. ISBN 9781980455226.
- ^ a b Douglas, John; Edgar, William (3 March 1962). "Smallpox in Bradford, 1962" (PDF). British Medical Journal. 1 (5278): 612–614. doi:10.1136/bmj.1.5278.612. ISSN 0007-1447. PMC 1957680. PMID 13887541.
- ^ "Smallpox (Hansard, 15 February 1962)". api.parliament.uk. Retrieved 1 May 2020.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Obituary; John Douglas". British Medical Journal. 304: 1242. 9 May 1992.