Vaccination

Vaccination Timeline: Key Milestones That Shaped Modern Immunisation

A quick, evergreen timeline of major vaccination milestones, designed for readers who want context without a textbook.

2 min read

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.