Vaccination

Vaccination Timeline: Key Milestones That Shaped Modern Immunisation

2025-12-17

Intro

Vaccination isn’t one story — it’s a long chain of system design, trust, logistics, and biology.

Here are the milestones that still shape policy today.

Key Points

• Vaccination success depends as much on systems as on science
• “Universal” schedules often exist to compensate for real-world gaps
• Birth-dose policies are usually about redundancy, not fear

Timeline

• 1796 — Early smallpox inoculation work becomes a prototype for vaccination.
• 1955 — Polio vaccine era begins; mass campaigns become a modern template.
• 1960s–1970s — Global scale-up: measles programs expand and routine childhood schedules consolidate.
• 1980 — Smallpox eradication declared; vaccination becomes a proof-of-concept for elimination.
• 1991 — Universal infant hepatitis B vaccination becomes a major strategy in settings prioritising perinatal prevention.
• 2000s — Wider use of combination vaccines and schedule optimisation.
• 2020s — Trust, misinformation, and politicisation become central constraints in high-income countries.

Related Reading

• Vaccination Hub
• Hepatitis B Birth Dose: Why It Exists and Why It Matters
• Hepatitis B Vaccine: Benefits, Timing, and Safety

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• #public health
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