One woman whose role in the struggle against the eradication of polio from Jamaica was pivotal has been reflecting on the island’s journey with the disease and the lessons that the population can learn from it.

As Jamaica and the world marks World Polio Day today, Professor Sheila Dorothy King Wynter, the second person to receive full professorship ever granted to a woman in The University of the West Indies’ (UWI) history, and the first woman to be elevated to the position of professor in the faculty of medicine at The UWI, recounted her experience to the Jamaica Observer of dealing with the polio outbreak in the island during the 1950s and 1980s.

Now 89 years old, Professor King Wynter, a Barbadian-born, Jamaican academic and physician, shared that during the first polio outbreak, in the 1950s, she was a student at the then University College of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica, pursuing the Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery degree.

“The main polio epidemic — I was working there as a junior. I came here in 1952 as a student when the polio was already on its way. And so I didn’t really work with that first big outbreak. It was people like Professor [John] Golding, with the paralysis and the public health people, who immediately instituted polio immunisation in the population and isolated the ones who were infected, and the contacts. That was in the early 1950s when the big outbreak took place here,” Professor King Wynter told the Sunday Observer.

“I wasn’t in the administrative ranks at that stage, as I was a student, but I saw the effects. It was quite a large outbreak. When I arrived here as a student, in fact, all of the Mona Campus valley there, with the playing fields, was occupied by tents housing the polio patients — the excess to those who could not be accommodated in the hospital. I don’t quite remember the numbers then, but it was brought under control quite well by immunisation of polio, which is a very effective vaccine,” she said.

In the 1980s Jamaica had another battle with polio. This time, Professor King Wynter had far more experience dealing with viral diseases.

In 1968 she was involved in a vaccine study to inoculate Jamaican schoolchildren at risk for the rubella virus with a weakened strain of live virus. In 1970, Professor King Wynter was granted tenure and three years later she was made head of the Department of Microbiology. Simultaneously, in 1973, she began working as the supervisor for the Ministry of Health’s Typhoid Carrier Surveillance Programme. The following year she was appointed to the advisory board of the Trinidad Virus Laboratory and became an advisor to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO)’s Committee on Dengue in the Americas. In 1977 a dengue epidemic swept through Jamaica, soon spreading throughout the Caribbean and to the American mainland. King and Dr Esmie Rose, who headed the Virology Department, directed the investigation to identify the virus and develop a plan to control it. Their findings were presented at a conference held in Montego Bay between May 8-11, 1978.

Professor King Wynter also made studies of the rotavirus and the role they played in the development of gastroenteritis, typhoid, meningitis, and Hepatitis B, and was a prolific publisher and presenter at international conferences on regional infectious disease. From 1981 she had additional responsibilities as director of the Jamaican Influenza Centre for the WHO and on the Advisory Board for the Caribbean Epidemiological Centre (CAREC). In 1998 she was awarded the Order of Distinction, Commander class and retired from UWI in 2001.

The 1980s outbreak, she said, was small and concentrated mainly in Montego Bay, St James. Professor King Wynter said vaccination and the willingness of the population brought it under control.

“The one that started in Montego Bay was much smaller and that was brought under control by the same means — people in the area complying. As far as I can remember it started with an infected person coming back home from the ship to Montego Bay and he had already been infected. The same process took place — isolation of himself and his immediate community in Montego Bay and general widespread vaccination of the population, all those who were not already immunised,” she said.

In addition, The Public Health (Immunisation) Regulations 1986, of the Public Health Act of Jamaica 1974 stipulates that vaccination history check at school entry is compulsory and children are not admitted to school unless a written record of their vaccination from a medical provider is provided. The exception only applied to children with documentation from a public immunisation officer or medical practitioner indicating that they have a medical contraindication to vaccination.

In 1988, the world committed to eradicating wild polio. Today, five out of six WHO regions are certified free of wild polio, including the World Health Organization (WHO) European Region, which was declared polio-free in 2002.

Further, Professor King Wynter said a key feature of the treatment of polio was the fact that once people saw the effects they were very willing to have the vaccine.

“They were quite impressed having seen what polio did — the paralysis. There was a fear as well as information, not just by hearing it, but by actually seeing patients. It was very vivid, so they complied quite readily and that, too, was brought under control quite rapidly with the compliance of the population there. They hadn’t seen polio, people were not familiar with the picture of paralysis and polio, but that was a very striking clinical feature, which was broadcast. People [who] knew about it were quite impressed and didn’t want to have that, so the compliance of the population was better in those days,” she said.

Conversely, as it relates to COVID-19, Professor King Wynter said the current population cannot see the effects of COVID and that might be part of the vaccine hesitancy.

“The picture of polio as they saw it for themselves was convincing, whereas to describe COVID to them and to say it keeps you in hospital, it’s not as dramatic to them as seeing a paralytic case with paralysed legs, arms if it got that high up or the human lungs to keep them alive,” she said. But now COVID, to them, it doesn’t mean very much. To them it’s like having a bad cold and you have to go in the hospital. People are not really impressed by the reports. The man in the streets… I don’t think he listens to the morbidity reports on the TV or radio. It does not impress him and when he sees somebody with COVID [to him] it’s just another very bad cold or you got pneumonia and had to go in the hospital. It’s not as striking a picture as polio. Respiratory infections, like COVID, aren’t that visible. It’s not as dramatic a picture as polio and paralysis of children, which was shown everywhere. They are not invited to the funerals, they can’t go on the wards to see people with respiratory illness breathing their last breath or requiring all the respiratory mechanisms to keep them alive. They don’t appreciate that, they don’t see COVID so they don’t think it counts. “

Moreover, she said the fight with polio did not have so many “what are my rights people”.

“Now it’s just my right, I don’t want the vaccine, so I don’t take it…It worries me because they are not educated enough to appreciate it. I hope the public health personal and CMO going around to communities will work. That is hard work on the public health people, but it seems to be the only way they hear and agree to be vaccinated. Once you become an adult with that sort of instilled in you that it is my right to refuse, I don’t know how you break down those unreasonable barriers? How do you isolate them so they are not a hazard to the rest of the population? That’s something to be considered. They will probably learn it the hard way, but they are also a risk to their neighbours and the rest of the population,” she said.

Professor King Wynter also believes mandatory vaccines and education from infancy would help with compliance and acceptance of the COVID-19 vaccines.

“If it’s made mandatory and employers insist on the requirement, it would help. The hesitancy is not new. I had to deal with it in research when I was working and people believed we were giving out rubella injection trying to kill out the black population. Positive education from infancy and not all these negative talks that have been instilled in so many people here would also help,” she said.