- Person
- Albert Sabin
- Lived
- 1906–1993
- Field
- Virology
- From
- Polish-American
The story
Before vaccines, polio paralysed an estimated 650,000 people a year worldwide, according to World Health Organization figures cited by the CDC. Vaccines brought it under control in wealthy countries in the 1950s and 1960s; the last case in the United States was reported in 1979. But when the Global Polio Eradication Initiative was launched in 1988, about 350,000 cases of paralytic polio were still occurring each year, mostly in poorer countries.
The initiative was led by the World Health Organization, UNICEF and Rotary International, together with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and was later joined by the Gates Foundation. It was inspired by Rotary's 1985 pledge to raise $120 million to immunise all the world's children. Its strategy combined routine immunisation, mass supplementary vaccination campaigns and close surveillance to find and stamp out outbreaks.
The campaign relied above all on Albert Sabin's oral vaccine. It was cheap, it could be given by volunteers as drops, and because it stopped the virus multiplying in the gut, it interrupted transmission. Sabin had refused to patent it so that its price could stay low. By 2001, some 575 million children, almost a tenth of the world's population, had received about two billion doses of oral polio vaccine.
Region after region was declared free of polio: the Americas in 1994, the Western Pacific in 2000, Europe in June 2002, South-East Asia in 2014 and, in August 2020, the African continent. Of the three types of wild poliovirus, type 2 was declared eradicated in 2015 and type 3 in 2019. Wild polio now survives only in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The final stage brings new challenges. In rare cases the weakened virus in the oral vaccine can regain its strength, and in under-vaccinated communities such vaccine-derived strains can spread. Health authorities have therefore shifted increasingly toward injected vaccines, and plan to stop oral vaccination after wild polio is certified eradicated. Even so, Sabin's vaccine did the work that brought one of humanity's most feared diseases to the edge of extinction.
Why it matters
Vaccines descended from Sabin's strains have spared millions of children from paralysis and brought one of humanity's most feared diseases to the edge of extinction.
About Albert Sabin
Białystok-born virologist whose cheap, oral polio vaccine, given on a sugar cube and never patented, became the backbone of the global drive to eradicate polio.
More about Albert Sabin
- Albert Sabin trained the scientist who unmasked RSVAlbert Sabin's Cincinnati laboratory trained Robert Chanock, his favourite “scientific son”, who later showed that RSV causes severe respiratory disease in young children.
- Albert Sabin gave his oral polio vaccine free of chargeAlbert Sabin developed the oral polio vaccine, cheap and easy to give on a sugar cube, and gave it free of charge without profiting from its sale.
- Albert Sabin showed polio begins in the gutBy studying the bodies of polio victims, Albert Sabin showed that the virus multiplies first in the intestine, an insight that shaped the oral vaccine he later created.
- A polio vaccine you could take on a sugar cubeAlbert Sabin's live oral polio vaccine was cheap, could be given as drops on a sugar cube, and protected the gut as well as the blood, so it stopped the virus spreading.
- Albert Sabin tested his polio vaccine on himself firstBefore asking anyone else to take his live oral polio vaccine, Albert Sabin swallowed it himself, and his family and colleagues were among the very first recipients.
- Albert Sabin fought tropical viruses for the US ArmyIn the Second World War Albert Sabin served on the Army's Neurotropic Virus Commission, studying dengue and sandfly fever and developing early vaccines and preventive measures.
- Sabin crossed the Iron Curtain to test his polio vaccineAt the height of the Cold War, Albert Sabin shared his vaccine strains with Soviet scientists, and about 77 million Soviet children were vaccinated in 1959–1961.
- Sabin Sundays brought free polio drops to a whole cityOn Sunday, April 24, 1960, Cincinnati began handing out Albert Sabin's oral polio vaccine for free, and about 180,000 local children were soon vaccinated.
Sources
- Albert Bruce Sabin: The Man Who Made the Oral Polio Vaccine Emerging Infectious Diseases (CDC)
- Polio eradication Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.