Polio Storm

With polio epidemics raging in Des Moines and Kansas City, and scores of needy patients requiring costly, round-the-clock hospital care, the funds allotted to local chapters by the National Foundation from the March of Dimes were fast running out. So the foundation asked local authorities for permission to stage out-of-season drives for emergency funds. Des Moines agreed, and more than $50,000 has been collected. But in Kansas City the request blew up a storm.

Mayor H. Roe Bartle and the city council were angry because Kansas City had contributed $105,000 to the March of Dimes, got back $34,000 for patient care --and now the National Foundation said it could not allot more because all its funds were committed. Snapped Mayor Bartle to a foundation spokesman: "I think you have sold the people a bill of goods." Councilman Charles C. Shafer Jr. tossed in the time-worn allegation about high headquarters overhead: "There's just too much discount by the Foundation before the money gets to the people.''

Last week, after first granting and then withholding approval, the Kansas City council voted unanimously to bar an emergency fund drive. It issued a bravado-packed statement that "the finest and best medical attention would be furnished by the municipality"--at taxpayers' expense. It ordered the city's health department to make sure that all needy patients get treated at the city's General Hospital. But this left a lot of loose ends. Many patients were being treated in private hospitals--and with the high costs of polio care, almost every family becomes needy.

While the city fathers fiddled, the virus spread. Kansas City had 109 cases of polio (nearly half of them paralytic) by week's end, with no sign that the epidemic was abating.

Just when polio vaccine was needed most, supplies were thin and spotty. Reason : spurts and lags in public demand have bedeviled the vaccine makers. Last year Eli Lilly & Co. alone destroyed n million doses for lack of takers (the vaccine deteriorates after six months). This year the U.S. Public Health Service has asked manufacturers to cut out exports. Both Lilly and Merck Sharp & Dohme laboratories have stepped up output; U.S. production to date (from five manufacturers) is up to more than 50 million doses--10% ahead of last year. But last week, with the belated demand for shots running ahead of estimates, North Carolina was out of vaccine. Rated as distressed areas qualifying for priority on new shipments: Iowa, Kansas. Missouri, Alabama, Texas, Arkansas, South Dakota and Oklahoma. Emergency redistribution of supplies is difficult because anybody who has enough vaccine is afraid to let go of it.

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