Ten diseases that have been defeated thanks to the vaccine

The effectiveness of vaccination was first discovered by folk medicine in ancient China and India, where children were vaccinated against smallpox. Since then, vaccinations have helped to eliminate many diseases. Here are just a few of them.

1. Smallpox

The first attempts to inoculate smallpox in England date back to the 18th century, when physician Edward Jenner made an experimental inoculation against "cowpox" in 1796. The last case of smallpox infection on earth was recorded in 1977.

2. Cholera

Defeated in 1870 when French microbiologist Louis Pasteur created the world's first live bacterial vaccine based on the chicken cholera virus.

3. tuberculosis

Tuberculosis ceased to be considered a deadly disease when microbiologist Albert Calmette and veterinarian Camille Guerin developed the first live bacterial vaccine for humans in France in 1908-1921, based on a strain of attenuated live bovine tuberculosis bacillus Mycobacterium bovis, which lost its virulence for humans by being specially grown in an artificial environment.

4. Diphtheria

Methods of diphtheria vaccination were first developed in Russia in 1902 by the physician S. K. Kovalev. К. Dzerzhikovsky, who conducted an experience on himself. Since 1923, regular vaccinations have been carried out, after which diphtheria was removed from the category of epidemic diseases.

5. Whooping cough

Whooping cough whole-cell vaccine was first created and licensed in the USA in 1914. It has dramatically reduced the incidence and severity of pertussis. Vaccination against pertussis is performed by every country in the world.

6. Tetanus

The causative agent of tetanus was discovered in 1883 by the Russian surgeon N. D. Monastyrsky, and in 1890 the Japanese microbiologist Kitadzato isolated an anti-tetanus serum, which today is the only means of tetanus prophylaxis.

7. Poliomyelitis

Poliomyelitis is an acute infectious disease that once posed a serious threat to children. After the first polio vaccine was patented by the American Jonas Salk in 1955, the disease disappeared completely in some countries.

8. Meningococcal infection

A disease with a high mortality rate, even despite timely and modern treatment. Up to 30 percent of those who contract the disease die. The only means of prevention is vaccination, created in 1960 by American doctors.

9. Measles

Considered defeated since 1963, when the U.S. began producing a live (from a weakened virus) vaccine. Vaccination against "German measles" (rubella) began in 1970, after which the incidence in Europe dropped to 0 percent.

10. Hepatitis B

In 1981, the first vaccine against hepatitis B was invented, and in 1986, the world's first genetically engineered vaccine against the disease was created.