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This photo triggers immunization against polio in the United States. PHOTO: Twitter
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And then there is great disbelief in injections against the disease
More than half a century ago, a great American star, Elvis Presley, decided to get vaccinated against polio in front of the camera, and this saved thousands of lives in the United States.
In the 1940s and 1950s, an epidemic of polio (polio) raged in the United States and around the world. In the late 1940s, the disease paralyzed an average of 35,000 people a year, most of them children. In 1952 alone, there were 58,000 deaths.
Tens of thousands of children are disabled for life every year, hospitals are overcrowded with small patients who can’t even breathe on their own because their fragile bodies are paralyzed and subjected to artificial ventilation with “iron lungs” recalls the events of the past site Dir .bg.
The United States is in a state of panic, and scientists are frantically looking for salvation. Franklin Delano Roosevelt himself was diagnosed with polio when he was 39, and became paralyzed from the waist down due to the sinister disease.
In 1951, Dr. Jonas Salk, head of the viral research laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh, was able to distinguish three different types of polio-causing viruses, which allowed him to develop a “dead” vaccine to inject the child into. to produce antibodies. Preliminary tests of the polio vaccine began in 1952, with Dr. Solk administering experimental doses to himself, his wife, and his three sons.
Two years later, the New York Department of Health launched a massive campaign to vaccinate against polio. “But the cost of the drug, apathy and ignorance have become serious obstacles to efforts to eradicate the serious disease,” wrote historian Stephen Moadsley.
Influential journalists use the media to campaign against the vaccine, and so onIn April 1955, more than 200,000 children from five American states were immunized, but the batch turned out to be defective – the polio virus was not killed. 200 children are paralyzed and 10 lose their lives, and this is a severe blow to the campaign.
On October 28, 1956, America’s biggest star, King of Rock Elvis Presley, went to the CBS studio to participate in The Ed Sullivan Show and received his polio vaccine in front of photographers. At that time, the percentage of vaccinated teenagers in the United States, who are the most at risk group, was only 0.6 percent.
Then-New York Health Commissioner Leona Baumgartner and her deputy, Harold Fürst, vaccinated Elvis, and photos of the event flooded the press across the country. Six months later, 80 percent of American boys and girls are immunized against polio.
In just 5 years, the number of patients decreased by 96 percent, and Dr. Jonas Salk became a national hero. He refused to patent his discovery, although estimates released by journalists and experts would make him the richest man in the world with a revenue of $ 7 billion.
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