Welcome back! KCOM's K6 cream telephone boxes make Hull city centre return
KCOM's cream K6 phone boxes have made a comeback as part of the Hull city-centre public realm works.
Two of KCOM’s classic cream K6 phone boxes have been filled with 300,000 Tate & Lyle sugar cubes to remember the time Hull led the world in world in combatting polio
Hull’s heroic efforts to eradicate polio in 1961 are being commemorated by a sweet art installation.
Two of KCOM’s classic cream K6 phone boxes have been filled with 300,000 Tate & Lyle sugar cubes to remember the time Hull led the world in world in combatting the deadly disease, vaccinating more than 350,000 people in Hull in the space of a week.
The installation has been organised by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the One Last Push Campaign which aims to stamp out polio for good. The two sugar-filled boxes will be on show in Hull city centre throughout World Immunisation Week which runs from 24 April to 30 April.
Dr Rosemary Wall, senior lecturer in global history at the University of Hull, is an expert in the history of medicine and researched the Hull vaccination response in 1961 when it became the first city in the world to carry out a mass inoculation against the disease.
She said: “Even though there were initially dozens of reported cases, such swift action meant that the outbreak was contained. Polio did not bring paralysis, suffering and death to hundreds of families in Hull in the way it impacted other cities throughout the UK in the 1940s and 50s, before the oral version of the vaccine became readily available.
“This was the first time in Western Europe that the new Sabin oral polio vaccine was used to immunise a population en masse, with health workers innovatively distributing the vaccine on specially treated sugar lumps. More than 350,000 people were quickly vaccinated – 20 per cent more than the population of Hull at that time.”
More than 3,000 volunteers helped to distribute the vaccine across 50 pop-up clinics set up in schools, health centres, church halls and shops. Groups including the Red Cross, St John’s Ambulance, Rotary Club and League of Jewish Women all mobilised to help as part of the effort.
Julia Weldon is director of public health at Hull City Council. It was her predecessor, Dr Alexander Hutchinson, who as council medical officer for health in Hull in 1961, made the case for using the newly available oral vaccine to break the polio epidemic and oversaw the vast public health campaign.
She said: “Pop-up clinics were set up in schools and church halls across the city. Nurses went into Hull factories so workers were able to take their sugar lumps quickly and easily without impacting production. There was even a clinic established in the then Hammonds department store in the city centre where 15,000 people were immunised in two days.”
Julia added that she hoped remembering Hull’s story would now help lead the final push to eradicating the disease once and for all.
“In World Immunisation Week, I hope Hull’s story will strengthen our resolve to eradicate this cruel and debilitating disease – and inspire health workers and volunteers who are working today to vaccinate children and end polio everywhere for good.”
Perched on top of the sugar cubes in the Queen Victoria Square phone is a sugar mountain sculpture created by Hull artist Clare Holdstock.
She said: “The idea of creating a mountain out of sugar was to represent the scale of the achievement by the people who vaccinated Hull back in 1961 –and the scale of the obstacle we now face to eradicate polio in other parts of the world. I’m pretty happy with how the sculpture’s turned out. I think it’s a great cause and I hope people stop to have a look and think about what it represents.”