Vaccination campaigns against viral diseases in Spain during the 20th Century: a view from the press (1951-1986)

Abstract

Since the end of the 19th century, it has been possible to fight against several viral diseases (smallpox, rabies, influenza, polio, measles, rubella and mumps) that, during the 20th century, had a massive effect on the adult and child population through vaccination programmes established when safe vaccines were available to prevent such diseases. Spain progressively incorporated these preventive measures, especially after its incorporation into the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1951. By the time the General Health Law was enacted in 1986, it had been possible to control and/or eliminate some of these diseases through systematic vaccination. The treatment and monitoring that the Spanish national press has given to the implementation of the vaccination campaigns against these diseases has been little studied. Therefore, the objectives of this paper are to analyse the repercussions in the national press of the vac­cination campaigns against these viral diseases between 1951 and 1986 and to check whether the written media reflected the global epidemiological measures adopted by WHO to combat them. Besides, to study its possible influence both in the development of public policies of vaccination and in the way how this information was transmitted to the population during the different socio-political and scientific contexts in the studied period.