1803-1806 жылдардағы испан империясындағы шешекке қарсы жаппай вакцинация экспедициясы

1803 06 mass vaccination campaign throughout the Spanish Empire

The Royal Philanthropic Vaccine Expedition (Lang es), commonly referred to as the Balmis Expedition, was a Spanish healthcare mission that lasted from 1803 to 1806, led by Dr Francisco Javier de Balmis, which vaccinated millions of inhabitants of Spanish America and Asia against smallpox. The vaccine was actually transported through children: orphaned boys who sailed with the expedition.

Smallpox, a devastating disease that was endemic throughout much of the Old World, decimated the populations of the Americas after it was introduced by the Spanish conquistadors in the 1500s. The medical staff and caretakers for the boys consisted of Balmis, a deputy surgeon, two assistants, two first aid practitioners, three nurses, and Isabel Zendal Gómez, the rectoress of Casa de Expósitos, an A Coruña orphanage. The mission took the vaccine to the Canary Islands, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, the Philippines and China. The ship carried also scientific instruments and translations of the Historical and Practical Treatise on the Vaccine by Moreau de Sarthe to be distributed to the local vaccine commissions to be founded. The Venezuelan poet Andrés Bello wrote an ode to Balmis. José Salvany, the deputy surgeon, went toward today's Colombia and the Viceroyalty of Peru (Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and Bolivia). The voyage took seven years and cost Salvany his life, as he died in 1810 in Cochabamba. In New Spain, Balmis took on 25 more orphans to maintain the infection during the crossing of the Pacific. In the Philippines, they received help from the Catholic church, which was initially reluctant until Governor General Rafael Aguilar made an example by vaccinating his five children. Balmis sent most of the expedition back to New Spain while he went on to China, where he visited Macau and Canton. On his way back to Spain in 1806, Balmis offered the vaccine to the British authorities in Saint Helena, despite the Anglo Spanish War (1796–1808). Jenner himself wrote, "I don't imagine the annals of history furnish an example of philanthropy so noble, so extensive as this." In 2006, Julia Alvarez wrote Saving the World, a fictional account of the expedition from the perspective of its only female member.