Polio Vaccine Milestone: Podcast celebrates 70th Anniversary of Historic Announcement at UM

UM medical experts discuss vaccines back then and now

In today's challenging era of vaccines, the University of Michigan School of Public Health held a live podcast taping on April 11, acknowledging a 70-year-old announcement that polio vaccines were declared safe and effective for audiences around the world.

The news was celebrated by nervous masses, mainly after the deaths of children under the age of five, iron lungs and paralysis.

“In factories across the country, the PA system announces that Detroit's polio vaccine and clothing workers in New York City have openly wept,” said David Osinski, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian for his book Polio, the Story of America. Interview A UM documentary to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the vaccine's announcement.

“People were sitting around the radio and listening to the outcome as if it were a rocky Marciano heavyweight fight. The fire light went out. The church bells rang.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bfxpdzwxla

Natasha BhagadasalianMichigan's top medical executive joins UM epidemiologists Matthew Boulton For this live recording of school Public Health Population Health Podcast. They discuss the history of polio vaccines and their development, and explore the current challenges and trends in using vaccinations to protect communities from polio and a wide range of other diseases.

On April 12, 1955, at the Rackham Auditorium in UM, Dr. Thomas Francis Jr. shared the success of Dr. Jonas Sark's vaccine research and testing with 1.8 million children, an unprecedented field trial. Francis was the epidemiology chair of the School of Public Health and the director of UM's Poliomyia Flame Vaccine Assessment Centre. Salk conducted graduate training at UM's School of Public Health.

Boulton shares his thoughts on the opportunity in his next Q&A:

Looking back at this milestone, do you feel like the best thing about vaccines?

I think there is widespread concern among the public health community that federal funding for U.S. vaccination programs could be cut. The country has made great strides in controlling vaccine-preventable diseases in a country with a decline of over 99% in many diseases. However, the recent outbreak of measles in Texas has involved hundreds of cases, demonstrating how quickly past successes can be solved, if the majority of children are not vaccinated, if they don't continue to prioritize and invest in childhood vaccinations.

In the US, how safe is polio, or how safe is the public?

Polio is currently endemic in only two countries: Pakistan and Afghanistan. We have previously entered into a wide range of eradication polio of hair from the world, but we are not there yet. That said, we have learned through our rigorous experience that local outbreaks of infectious diseases in distant countries can head to the United States, given the unprecedented rapid movement of people, animals and products around the world. Recently, there have been a staggering cuts in USAID and other international aid organizations that help vaccinate and detect and control infectious diseases. We all represent a very real threat to the implications of reducing funding for the potential reintroduction of previously excluded diseases like polio.

How was the arrival of the polio vaccine 70 years ago revealed?

Before the Salk Polio vaccine in 1955, there were about 15,000 to 16,000 cases of paralytic polio in the United States each year, and sometimes even more. Many parents were constantly afraid that their children would be ill, especially during the warm summer months when frequent outbreaks occur. The arrival of polio vaccines and the subsequent dramatic decline in polio cases were told as one of the historical scientific breakthroughs and the greatest public health outcomes of the 20th century.