Today, pay tribute to "Sugar Pill Grandpa"

Many people should have a memory like this:

When we went to the health center or hospital for vaccinations when we were young, the doctor would always feed us a white sugar pill with a spoon.

However, many people may not know that this small sugar pill, which is sweet, cheap and easy to take, was gradually developed along with my country's fight against polio.

This tiny "sugar pill" also embodies the life's work of an old man. He has kept tens of millions of Chinese children away from polio, made China a polio-free country, and will be remembered by the Chinese people forever.

His name is Gu Fangzuo, and the children affectionately call him "Sugar Pill Grandpa".

today

It's his birthday

Let’s review

The life of this "people's scientist"

Image source: Xinhua News Agency

In my country, babies born two months old must be vaccinated against polio. Poliomyelitis, commonly known as poliomyelitis.

Currently, there are two types of vaccines used to prevent polio: oral attenuated live polio vaccine and injectable inactivated polio vaccine. Oral polio vaccine is the sugar pill we are familiar with.

Turning back the clock to 1955, polio broke out in the country. 1,680 people in Nantong, Jiangsu Province were suddenly paralyzed, mostly children, and 466 people died. The disease then spread rapidly to Qingdao, Shanghai, Jining, Nanning... For a time, the whole country was in panic.

Gu Fangzuo recalled: "In July and August 1955, every household in Nanning closed the windows and did not let the children go out. The only way to prevent polio was to invent a vaccine."

At that time, it was not yet determined which type of the three polio viruses was prevalent in the country, and there was almost no research on the etiology and serology.

GIF source: CCTV.com

In 1957, Gu Fangzuo officially started his polio research. He led a polio live vaccine research team to set up a vaccine laboratory in a cave in the suburbs of Kunming. From then on, dealing with polio became his lifelong career.

After the vaccine passed the animal test, it entered the more critical clinical trial stage. According to the plan designed by Gu Fangzuo, the clinical trial is divided into three phases: I, II, and III. Among them, the first phase requires testing the effect on a small number of people.

Faced with unknown risks, Gu Fangzhou drank a small bottle of vaccine solution without hesitation. After a week of uncertainty, his vital signs were stable without any abnormalities.

However, most adults are immune to the polio virus, so the vaccine must be proven to be safe for children. So, whose children should be used for the trial? Gu Fangzuo encountered a new problem.

So he made an amazing decision: He secretly gave the vaccine to his one-month-old son without telling his wife! Some researchers in the laboratory also made the same decision: they let their children participate in the trial. After a long and arduous month, the children's vital signs were normal! The first phase of clinical trials passed smoothly.

After going through numerous difficulties and dangers, in December 1960, the first batch of 5 million doses of vaccine was successfully produced and promoted in 11 cities across the country. The peak of the epidemic was reduced in the cities where the vaccine was administered.

Faced with the increasingly worsening epidemic situation, Gu Fangzhou realized that the refrigerated storage of vaccines has increased the difficulty of vaccine coverage; at the same time, liquid vaccines also bring inconvenience to transportation. In addition, liquid vaccines are not easy for children to take.

How can we make vaccines that are easy to transport and that children will love to take?

After more than a year of research and testing, Gu Fangzhou and others finally successfully developed a sugar pill vaccine. In addition to being delicious, the sugar pill vaccine is also an upgraded version of the liquid vaccine: it preserves the potency of the live vaccine virus and extends the shelf life. In order to allow remote areas to use the sugar pill vaccine, Gu Fangzhou also came up with a "local method" for transportation: putting the frozen sugar pills in a thermos!

These inventions have enabled the sugar pill vaccine to quickly spread to every corner of the motherland.

In 1990, the national polio eradication program began to be implemented.

In 2000, the "China Polio Eradication Confirmation Report Signing Ceremony" was held. 74-year-old Gu Fangzuo, as a representative, solemnly signed his name.

From no vaccine available to eradicating polio, Gu Fangzuo has spent more than 40 years protecting Chinese children from polio. Faced with such an achievement, he humbly said: I have only done one thing in my life, which is to make a small "sugar pill".

With a seemingly cruel persistence, he expressed his love for his country, his people and science, accomplished a feat worthy of record in the history of science, and left a brilliant mark in the glorious epic after the founding of New China. Thank you, Grandpa Tangwan, for protecting us as we grow up healthily!

Comprehensive sources: Xinhua News Agency, CCTV.com, Guangming Daily, etc.