How the USSR helped Japan defeat a deadly virus I.Golubchin/Sputnik; Archive photo; Getty Images The most effective vaccine against polio was invented by an American scientist, but tested in the USSR, despite the Cold War. And it is to Moscow that the Japanese government appealed for help after mothers fearful for their children took to the streets to stage protests.
Japanese newsreels from 1961 show long waiting lines at vaccination stations. Worried-looking women are holding babies in their arms and older children stand next to their parents, while members of medical center staff are recording everyone who has received the vaccine. The vaccine was not injected, but taken orally: Children swallowed the medicine from spoons and were no longer able to catch poliomyelitis (commonly known as polio) - a dangerous disease that affects the gray matter of the spinal cord and can cause paralysis of the limbs and even cause death.