FactSentinel

Vaccines have dramatically reduced the global burden of infectious diseases, with polio and measles serving as prime examples of this public health success. Before the polio vaccine became widely available in 1955, the disease paralyzed thousands of children annually in the United States alone. Following mass vaccination campaigns, polio cases in the U.S. dropped from approximately 35,000 per year in the early 1950s to zero by 1979, when the disease was declared eliminated from the country. Globally, polio cases have decreased by over 99% since 1988, from an estimated 350,000 cases to just a handful of cases today, confined to a few countries.

Similarly, measles vaccination has prevented millions of deaths worldwide. The measles vaccine, introduced in 1963, led to a 99% reduction in measles cases in the United States by 2000, when the disease was declared eliminated from the country. The World Health Organization estimates that measles vaccination prevented approximately 23 million deaths between 2000 and 2018 alone. Before widespread vaccination, measles infected nearly all children by age 15 and caused millions of deaths annually worldwide.

The effectiveness of these vaccines is supported by decades of epidemiological data showing consistent patterns: disease rates plummet in populations with high vaccination coverage and resurge when vaccination rates decline. This evidence, combined with laboratory studies demonstrating how vaccines stimulate protective immune responses, establishes vaccines as one of the most successful public health interventions in human history.