Cold War tensions and the polio vaccine Cold War tensions and the polio vaccine Polio (Infantile paralysis or poliomyelitis) epidemics were a concern during the summer months for children globally, with records of polio from the Egyptians and Greeks to the 1950s epidemics. In the summer of 1921, this epidemic became notorious when Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Democratic contender for the vice presidency, was struck down by polio at the age of 39. Two U.S. virologists, Jonas Salk of the University of Pittsburgh and Albert B. Sabin of the University of Cincinnati emerged as the most prominent among dozens of American researchers on the quest for a
Sabin Vaccine Institute Africa, and the Americas. Sabin is currently working on multiple vaccines for humans including vaccines for Hookworm infection ("Na"-GST-1, "Na"-APR-1), Schistosomiasis ("Sm"-TSP-2), Chagas disease ("Tc"24, TSA-1), Leishmaniasis ("Ld"-NH36, PdSP15), Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)/Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) (Pan-β-CoVax), Soil-transmitted helminthiasis (STH), and Onchocerciasis (Ov-"103", Ov-"RAL-2"). In 2006, Sabin co-founded the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases in order "to raise the awareness, political will and funding necessary to control and eliminate the most common NTDs." Through its work on NTDs, Sabin hopes to reduce poverty caused by these diseases as many of them have been shown to adversely affect