Oral Polio Vaccine

October 6, 1956

Dr. Albert Sabin announces his oral polio vaccine (OPV) was ready for wide-scale testing. It was administered by sugar cube, as opposed to Jonas Salk‘s polio vaccine that was administered by injection.
By 1961, Sabin’s OPV had been tested on at least 100 million people in the USSR, parts of Eastern Europe, Singapore, Mexico, and the Netherlands. Clinical trials of the OPV in the United States began in April 1960 on 180,000 Cincinnati school children. This effectively eradicated polio in Cincinnati.