Health & biology · 1955

Polio vaccine

Jonas Salk's killed-virus vaccine, tested on 1.8 million children, was declared safe and effective.

Announced in April 1955, the Salk vaccine was followed by Albert Sabin's oral vaccine in 1961. Wild polio cases have fallen by over 99.9 percent since 1988.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

HeLa cell line 1951
Vaccination 1796

Watch

1956 Film on Polio Vaccine (portion) Reel America®C-SPAN · YouTube

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Estimated paralytic polio cases Latest: 3.75k cases (2023) Source: Our World in Data

Childhood vaccine coverage Latest: DTP3: 85 % of one-year-olds (2025) Source: Our World in Data

Child mortality (under 5) Latest: 3.74 % (2024) Source: Our World in Data