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In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, frequent epidemics saw polio become the most feared disease in the world. A major outbreak in New York City in 1916 killed over 2000 people, and the worst recorded US outbreak in 1952 killed over 3000.
Many who survived the disease faced lifelong consequences. Deformed limbs meant they needed leg braces, crutches or wheelchairs, and some needed to use breathing devices like the iron lung, an artificial respirator invented for treatment of polio patients.
By the mid-20th century, the poliovirus could be found all over the world and killed or paralysed over half a million people every year. With no cure, and epidemics on the rise, there was an urgent need for a vaccine.
A breakthrough occurred in 1949, when poliovirus was successfully cultivated in human tissue by John Enders, Thomas Weller and Frederick Robbins at Boston Children's Hospital. Their pioneering work was recognized with the 1954 Nobel Prize.
Not long afterwards, in the early 1950s, the first successful vaccine was created by US physician Jonas Salk. Salk tested his experimental killed-virus vaccine on himself and his family in 1953, and a year later on 1.6 million children in Canada, Finland and the USA.
The results were announced on 12 April 1955, and Salk's inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) was licensed on the same day. By 1957, annual cases dropped from 58 000 to 5600, and by 1961, only 161 cases remained.
Salk was committed to equitable access to his vaccine, and understood that elimination efforts would not work without universal low- or no-cost vaccination.
Six pharmaceutical companies were licensed to produce IPV, and Salk did not profit from sharing the formulation or production processes.
In a 1955 interview, when asked who owned the patent for IPV, he replied: "Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?" ...
