The Revolution’s decision to preserve the health of the people with effective solutions was demonstrated in 1962 when the first national vaccination campaign against poliomyelitis began in Cuba.
Polio, until the Triumph of the Revolution, was an endemic disease that left some 300 children each year suffering from paralysis after contracting the disease. The country suffered five major epidemics of this ancient disease, which is estimated to have affected the world more than 3,000 years ago.
In order to carry out the campaign initiated in 1962, our country had to mobilize some 100 thousand members of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), so that they could carry out the census of the population to be vaccinated.
The general objective of this first campaign was to control the incidence of the disease and, as a specific objective, to immunize more than 2 million 500 thousand children under 15 years of age with two doses of polio vaccine.
In 1965, Cuba received the certification of eradication of Poliomyelitis by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).
The elimination of this disease in Cuba, since the first immunization campaign, is considered the most relevant result of the Cuban revolutionary Public Health in the field of prevention. Thus, the human drama of death and disability of hundreds of cases every year disappeared, at a low cost, with remarkable social repercussions.
