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The first vaccine, made by the English doctor Edward Jenner in 1796, protected against smallpox. In 1980 the World Health Organization declared smallpox eradicated, the first and still the only human disease wiped out worldwide.

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Long before Jenner, people in China, India and the Ottoman Empire protected children by variolation, deliberately giving them a mild dose of smallpox. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the British ambassador's wife, saw it in Istanbul and had her son inoculated there in 1718. Jenner noticed that milkmaids who caught cowpox, a mild disease of cattle, seemed to be safe from smallpox, and in 1796 he tested this on an eight-year-old boy, James Phipps. The word vaccine comes from vacca, Latin for cow. Even so, smallpox killed an estimated 300 million people in the 20th century. In 1967 the WHO stepped up a global campaign built on surveillance and ring vaccination: finding every case and vaccinating everyone around it. The last natural case was a hospital cook in Somalia, Ali Maow Maalin, in October 1977.

Türkçe oku
İlk aşıyı İngiliz hekim Edward Jenner 1796'da çiçek hastalığına karşı geliştirdi. Dünya Sağlık Örgütü 1980'de çiçeğin yeryüzünden silindiğini ilan etti; çiçek, kökü kazınan ilk ve hâlâ tek insan hastalığıdır.

Jenner'dan çok önce Çin'de, Hindistan'da ve Osmanlı topraklarında çocukları korumak için onlara bilerek hafif bir çiçek bulaştırılırdı; bu yönteme variolasyon ya da çiçek aşılaması denir. İngiliz büyükelçinin eşi Lady Mary Wortley Montagu bu uygulamayı İstanbul'da gördü ve 1718'de oğlunu orada aşılattı. Jenner, sığırlarda görülen hafif bir hastalık olan inek çiçeğini geçiren sağımcı kızların çiçeğe pek yakalanmadığını fark etmişti. 1796'da bu gözlemini sekiz yaşındaki James Phipps üzerinde denedi. İngilizcede aşı anlamına gelen vaccine sözcüğü, Latincede inek demek olan vacca'dan gelir. Aşıya rağmen çiçek, yalnızca 20. yüzyılda tahminen 300 milyon kişiyi öldürdü. Dünya Sağlık Örgütü 1967'de küresel kampanyayı hızlandırdı. Kampanyanın temeli vakaları tek tek bulmak ve her vakanın çevresindeki herkesi aşılamaktı; buna halka aşılama denir. Doğal yolla görülen son vaka, Ekim 1977'de Somali'de hastane aşçısı olarak çalışan Ali Maow Maalin'di.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Smallpox
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