How the USSR helped vaccinate the Japanese

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The most effective vaccine against polio was invented by an American scientist - but tested it, despite the Cold War, in the USSR.

Japanese newsreels from 1961 - long queues at the vaccination stations. Women with worried faces are holding babies in their arms, older children are standing next to their parents, staff at first-aid posts are recording everyone who has received the vaccine. It is not injected, but taken orally: children swallow the medicine from spoons. Now they will not get polio - a dangerous disease that affects the gray matter of the spinal cord, can cause paralysis of the limbs and even kill.

The polio vaccine in Japan was long awaited - 13 million doses were imported from the Soviet Union in the summer of 1961. Prior to that, indignant mothers, fearing for the fate of their children, protested in the streets for months and besieged the Ministry of Health - the government was very reluctant to buy vaccines from Moscow. But why exactly did the USSR find itself at the forefront of the fight against polio?

International disaster

Poliomyelitis, or infantile spinal palsy, has been with mankind for a long time: there are suggestions that they were sick with it in ancient Egypt. It was because of polio that the President of the United States was confined to a wheelchair in 1933-1945. Franklin D. Roosevelt. He contracted it already in adulthood, but this is rather an exception to the rule - usually the disease affects children.

“A child born in full health becomes disabled in one evening. Could it be a disease worse than this?”, In June 1961, the newspaper Akahata quoted one of the alarmed Japanese mothers.

After World War II, as cities grew and populations grew in density, polio became rampant, with outbreaks becoming more frequent and affecting more people. The USSR was no exception - if in 1950 there were 2,500 cases of diseases, in 1958 there were already more than 22,000. It was necessary to act.

Two vaccines

In 1955, the Institute for the Study of Poliomyelitis was established in the USSR. It was headed by a scientist with vast experience - Mikhail Chumakov (1909 - 1993), the best virologist of the Soviet Union. Even in his youth, while researching tick-borne encephalitis in a remote Siberian village, he accidentally became infected, lost his hearing for the rest of his life and was left with a paralyzed right hand, but this did not prevent him from continuing his career: studying viruses and selflessly fighting them.

But the polio vaccine was nevertheless developed not by Chumakov, but by his American colleague. More precisely, two American scientists - Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin - created two vaccines that work on different principles: Salk used "killed" polio cells, and Sabin, together with his colleague Hilary Koprowski - a live virus.

The American government adopted the inactivated ("killed") Salk vaccine, it was she who was the first to be tested and purchased around the world, including in Japan. In the USSR, they also tried out the Salk method, but were not satisfied. “It became clear that the Salk vaccine was not suitable for a nationwide campaign. It turned out to be expensive, it had to be injected at least twice, and the effect was far from 100%,”recalled scientist Pyotr Chumakov, son of Mikhail.

"General Chumakov" and antivirus candy

Despite the Cold War and the political confrontation between the United States and the USSR, scientists from the two countries have always cooperated: Mikhail Chumakov traveled to America, talked with both Jonas Salt and Albert Sabin. The latter gave Chumakov the necessary strains for the production of a "live" vaccine - as Pyotr Chumakov recalls, "everything happened without formalities, the parents brought the strains literally" in their pocket."

On the basis of Sabin's technology, a "live" vaccine was made in the USSR, and its tests were successful. The form that Chumakov had successfully chosen also played a role - they decided to release the vaccine in the form of sweets, the children did not have to be afraid of injections.

The tests "in the field" were excellent: in 1959, with the help of a "live" vaccine, they quickly stopped an acute outbreak of poliomyelitis in the Baltic republics. Then the USSR completely switched to the "live" vaccine and poliomyelitis in the country was defeated on a mass level. Sabin jokingly called Chumakov "General Chumakov" in his correspondence for such a quick and massive campaign against polio.

Meanwhile in Japan

By the late 1950s, the polio situation in Japan was not as bad as in many other countries, with 1,500 to 3,000 cases reported annually. Therefore, the government paid little attention to the fight against the disease - it was believed that the Salt vaccines imported from the United States and Canada (in a modest volume) would be enough to solve the problem.

“Along with the government’s inaction, most Japanese scientists also did not pay attention to the problem of polio. There was a lot of resistance to our work,”said Masao Kubo, one of the organizers of the campaign against infantile spinal palsy. - [We were told:] “But this is some one thousand or two thousand people. Is it worth making a fuss about this? " Many of the doctors the parents consulted did not diagnose polio in time, which caused the children to die or become disabled.

Wave of protests

In 1960, the number of detected cases of polio in Japan rose sharply - up to 5,600, 80% of cases were children. Salk vaccines were not sufficient for large-scale vaccinations, and their effectiveness was questionable. Own Japanese developments were unsuccessful. Protests broke out throughout the country: by that time, Sabin's "live" vaccine had been tested outside the USSR and were convinced of its effectiveness.

Parents of sick children demanded to import a "live" vaccine, but the authorities were in no hurry to comply with these requirements. Officials doubted whether the vaccine would be effective for the Japanese, the government did not want to cooperate with the "reds" (Japan at that time remained a loyal ally of the United States), and pharmaceutical companies arranged their contracts with North American firms.

Last straw

Nevertheless, in 1961 a powerful nationwide movement was formed, bringing together parents, many doctors and political activists. All of them demanded to buy a vaccine from the USSR and conduct a mass vaccination. As researcher Izumi Nishizawa notes in an article about this movement, gradually people moved from the idea of a vaccine for my child to a vaccine for all children in the country, which allowed formerly scattered activists to unite and act as a united front.

“We ask you to provide a“live”vaccine as soon as possible! Every day, children are haunted by an invisible virus. Don't you have children yourself? Hasn't the corresponding research been already carried out abroad? This is not because of the dissatisfaction of pharmaceutical companies? In parallel with the protests, research was going on: a scientist from the Japanese Medical Association Masao Kubo made a visit to Moscow in December 1960 - January 1961, where he made sure of the reliability of the Sabin vaccines produced in the USSR, as well as their lower price compared to other countries. The government had fewer reasons to refuse to import them.

They were gone when on June 19, 1961, mothers protesting in Tokyo entered the building of the Ministry of Health - the police could not stop the women - and presented their demands directly to the officials. On June 22, the ministry surrendered: it was announced that the USSR would supply Japan with 13 million doses of the "live" vaccine. Through the mediation of the Japanese company Iskra Industry, the deliveries were organized promptly. “Old-timers probably remember how Aeroflot's airliner met thousands of crowds at Haneda airport,” wrote journalist Mikhail Efimov, who headed the Bureau of the Political News Agency in Japan for more than 10 years.

Vaccination quickly yielded results: by the fall, the outbreak in Japan had subsided, and after a few years and vaccination campaigns, this disease was practically eradicated in the country. Thanks for this are both Albert Sabin, the inventor of the vaccine, and Mikhail Chumakov, without whose efforts it would not have won popularity all over the world, and, of course, thousands of Japanese mothers, doctors and activists who demanded that the government put aside politics for the sake of the future of children.