Confronting an Emergency: The Vaccination Campaign Against Meningitis in Brazil (1974–1975)

Abstract

Summary On the basis of a wide range of historical sources, including published scientific literature and both public and private archives (Institut Mérieux, WHO and IMTSSA), this article examines the history of the Brazilian vaccination campaign against cerebrospinal meningitis between 1974 and 1975. It explores not only certain aspects of vaccine production but also the wider social aspects of the ongoing project. Thus, it shows how the different actors were mobilised and their work coordinated in order to produce and vaccinate a whole country or more specifically, 90 million Brazilians in less than a year. This episode not only adds to the scholarship on the politics of vaccination but also attests to the complex reality of the production and use of a vaccine in the context of a public health emergency.