You are warmly invited to our department seminar: 

Tuesday 26 April, 16:15

‘Vaccinating the Nation: Mass Immunization in Modern China and Global Health, 1949-78’

Dr Mary Augusta Brazleton (University of Cambridge)

All welcome!

Abstract: This talk will survey immunology and mass vaccination programs in the People’s Republic of China, arguing that the Chinese Communist Party promoted vaccination as a means by which the central state asserted competence and capacities in public health administration. The success of these campaigns therefore helped bolster the legitimacy of the central government at a key moment in its consolidation of power. The PRC subsequently promoted the control of infectious diseases to which vaccination programs had contributed as a major administrative success alongside its much more well-known barefoot doctor and rural health care programmes. This rural health care system became a model broadly championed in communities of global health, but was also connected to regional and global Cold War politics.