Dozens of countries poised to drive out malaria by 2020
Success in Sri Lanka raises hopes that at least 30 other nations could follow suit, marking beginning of the end for disease that kills 400,000 every year
Public health & disease
India launches massive, historic Swachh Bharat Mission to boost poverty alleviation through sanitation efforts
Initiated by the Indian government, the mission aimed to achieve an “open-defecation free” and resulted in the construction of an estimated 89.9 million toilets between 2014 and 2019.
Smallpox becomes first infectious human disease to be fully eradicated
The WHO launched an intensified plan to eradicate smallpox in 1967. Widespread immunization and surveillance were conducted around the world for several years. The last known natural case was in Somalia in 1977.
Robert Austrian, Jerome Gold, and colleagues develop world’s first pneumococcal vaccine
With the discovery of penicillin in 1928, interest in vaccines to prevent pneumonia waned. The assumption was that the problem would largely be eliminated by use of this antibiotic. Austrian and Gold, however, showed that, despite treatment with penicillin, deaths from pneumococcal pneumonia were unchanged in the first 96 hours of therapy. These efforts ultimately led to the licensing first of a 14-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide in 1977 followed by the 23-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide in 1983.
Global life expectancy surpasses 40 years for first time ever
Through major advancements in medicine, public health, and poverty alleviation, by 2021 the global average life expectancy was just over 70 years. Less than 15 years later, humanity reaches another critical milestone by achieving 75 years of life expectancy around the world.
World Health Organization launches unprecedented Global Malaria Eradication Programme
The historic program successfully eliminated the disease in North America, Europe, the former Soviet Union, Taiwan, much of the Caribbean, the Balkans, parts of northern Africa, the northern region of Australia, and a large swath of the South Pacific, and dramatically reduced mortality in Sri Lanka and India.
Global child mortality rate plummets from a historical average of 48% to 27% in 1950
As recently as two centuries ago, around 1 in 2 children died before reaching the end of puberty. Our ancestors were often largely powerless against poverty, famine, and disease, and these calamities were especially devastating for children. Since then, child mortality has plummeted across the world. This dramatic decline has resulted from better nutrition, clean water, sanitation, neonatal healthcare, vaccinations, medicines, and reductions in poverty, conflicts, and famine.
Mao Zedong reintroduces Traditional Chinese Medicine into Chinese health care system
Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is a style of traditional medicine based on more than 2,500 years of Chinese medical practice that includes various forms of herbal medicine, acupuncture, massage (tui na), exercise (qigong), and dietary therapy.
Albert Schatz of Rutgers University isolates the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis, streptomycin
Streptomycin is now on the World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines. The World Health Organization classifies it as critically important for human medicine.
Louis S. Goodman and Alfred Gilman run first human trial of cancer chemotherapy
In collaboration with thoracic surgeon Gustaf Lindskog, the two doctors from Yale School of Medicine injected the chemical mustine into a patient with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. In a monumental moment for the field of medicine, the patient, a Polish immigrant to Connecticut known in literature only as JD, experienced a dramatic reduction in his tumor masses, paving the way for millions of future patients who would benefit from the therapy in the years and decades to come.