By the end of the 1950s Hungary became an unlikely leader in what we now  call global health. Only three years after Soviet tanks crushed the revolution  of 1956, Hungary became one of the first countries to introduce the Sabin  vaccine into its national vaccination programme. This immunisation campaign  was built on years of scientific collaboration between East and West, in  which scientists, specimens, vaccines and iron lungs crossed over the Iron  Curtain. D√≥ra Vargha uses a series of polio epidemics in communist Hungary  to understand the response to a global public health emergency in the midst of  the Cold War. She argues that despite the antagonistic international atmosphere  of the 1950s, spaces of transnational cooperation between blocs  emerged to tackle a common health crisis. At the same time, she shows that  epidemic concepts and policies were influenced by the very Cold War  rhetoric that medical and political cooperation transcended. Also available  as Open Access.

Polio Across the Iron Curtain

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