Dear Parents and Carers,
THE FATHER OF MODERN VACCINES
One night in 1963, a little girl named Jeryl Lynn cried out for her father. She felt very sick with a sore throat. Her father felt her neck and discovered she had swollen glands. He took her temperature which showed she had a fever. What was wrong with her? Some of you may have guessed. Jeryl Lynn had mumps. Some of you might have had mumps. You can get a mild dose and not suffer very much but some children get very sick. They can go deaf. Or their brain is damaged. Sometimes children have died from mumps.
Fortunately Jeryl Lynn's father was a scientist and took swabs so that he could preserve the virus. Those swabs became the Jeryl Lynn strain of the mumps vaccine, still used today. Many of you will have had the MMR vaccine to protect you against mumps and measles.
Jeryl Lynn's father was Maurice Hilleman. He and his team developed over 40 vaccines that are estimated to save nearly 8 million lives every year/ He is one of the greatest vaccinologists of all time. Some of his vaccines you may know about and been inoculated with - measles, mumps, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, chickenpox, meningitis, pneumonia and even the flu.
In 1957 there was an outbreak of influenza in Hong Kong that threatened to become a huge pandameic. Maurice found that it as a new strain of flu that could kill millions and created a vaccine. In 1968, there was another serious Hong Kong flu pandemic. Again Maurice and his team helped develop a vaccine. Every year a new vaccine is produced to protect us.
It is because of scientists like Maurice Hilleman that you probably have never heard of diseases like polio, smallpox, diphtheria, tetanus and scarlet fever. in some parts of the world, millions of children die every year from diseases like these but now, because every year many more millions of children are vaccinated, some those diseases have almost disappeared from countries like ours. Mothers and fathers no longer have to watch their children die from terrible diseases that can be prevented by vaccines. Children no longer suffer all their lives from the dreadful lasting effects of a childhood illness.
If you have never had mumps, it is thanks to Jeryl Lynn Hilleman, her father Maurice and a wonderful team f scientists. He truly was the father of modern vaccines. And there are many, many scientists still working hard today, developing vaccines for diseases like Covid-19.
We live safer, healthier, longer lives because or the lifesaving vaccines they made for us.
Acknowledgement: Wikipedia and various sources
Warm regards
Phil Mahony
