There are only 2 vaccines used throughout the world to fight polio. The vaccine for Polio was first tested by Jonas Salk in 1952. Jonas's vaccine works by putting a dead or inactivated polio virus into someones body and the bodys immune system develops antibodies to fight the virus if it ever attacks. this is very usefull because the bodys immune system never forgets a virus. But Albert Sabin developed a vaccine that used a harmless or weakened virus to put into the human body so it can build an immunity.
In 1952 the US reported about 58,000 polio cases and 35,000 in 1953. So in my opinion it was a pretty devastating epidemic. on February 27,1950 the polio vaccine was first tested on a person. the boy had no side effects so they decided to test it on a larger scale.
There was a mass test of the polio vaccine in 1954. 1.8 million children were part of the test that covered 44 states. 1.2 million children served as a control group and did not receive the vaccination. 440,000 received the vaccine and 210,000 children received a placebo. This was the largest medical test in history and the results were announced April 12, 1955. which was the 10th anniversary of the death of president Franklin Roosevelt. The test was successfull and the vaccine for polio was in use by the general public, and by 1957 there were only 5600 cases in the United States. By 1961 there were only 161 cases of polio in the united states.
by 1994 polio was completely gone from the americas and as of 2007 polio only remains an endemic in 4 countries. Nigeria, India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
I beleive that the vaccine for polio was a huge world changing factor of today. Even though we lost many great people to polio like president Roosevelt, the nation still held on as this endemic passed over the years.
Sources: http://www.vaccineinformation.org/polio/qandadis.asp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine
this was a poster promoting the polio vaccine.
this is a picture of the creating of polio vaccines.
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