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Today we consider vaccinations to be a part of our lives. It is taken for granted that everyone has been vaccinated as children against a multitude of diseases. However there was a time when disease was considered to part of everyday life. Through human history, disease has brought about death and destruction. There have been innumerable epidemics and even endemics which have taken a toll on human life. If one looks at the history of vaccinations, one sees that it has only been the last 200 hundred years or so in which we have had vaccinations, and even then, in the modern age, vaccinations have gained momentum only after the 1950's beginning with the eradication of small pox. When one studies the history of vaccinations you see that crude immunization practices were already underway in China in India as early as 1000 AD. There are records describing how powdered small pox scabs were inhaled by non-infected persons to develop immunity to the disease. Of course, the history of vaccinations credits Jenner with the first vaccination for small pox in 1796. As the history of vaccinations goes, it was a pioneering event, one that has helped develop vaccinations not only for
small pox, but for several other serious diseases. All through the history of vaccinations, scientists and researchers have been struggling to develop vaccines for more and more diseases. They have been successful in creating vaccines for some of the more harmful diseases. In the 19th century itself, several vaccinations that are used today were developed. These include Cholera (1879), Rabies (1882), Typhoid fever (1896), and Bubonic plague (1897). In the 20th century, there was a flood of discoveries and all the vaccinations we use today were developed including tetanus, diphtheria, mumps, measles, hepatitis, yellow fever influenza, polio etc. In the history of vaccinations the eradication of small pox is a pivotal event. This was a serious and widespread disease that had ravaged human life for several thousand years. In the 1960's the World Health Organisation (WHO) launched a systematic campaign against smallpox, and aimed for its eradication with the use of the small pox vaccination that had been developed nearly 200 years earlier. This goal was achieved in 1977 and small pox became the first human disease to have been successfully eradicated. Vaccinations today are more sophisticated and effective than anytime in the history of vaccinations in terms of sterility and success rates. The history of vaccinations shows us the important public health tool vaccinations are and how they can be used to fight diseases. This is why even today we are constantly developing new vaccines against diseases like Malaria and Herpes so that this generation too has a small part to play in the long and successful history of vaccinations. Childhood Vaccination
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