By some estimates, Dr. Robbins’s vaccine against the illness, called Hib meningitis, has saved seven million lives since it was licensed in 1989.
Pediatricians who worked in the pre-vaccine days remember feeling their hearts sink when they saw Hib bacteria under a microscope in a baby’s spinal fluid. It meant that, even with antibiotics, the child was at risk of permanent brain damage, deafness or death.
Before the vaccine, Hib meningitis killed about 400,000 children a year, according to the World Health Organization….
I always live in slight fear of seeing a child with deadly HiB meningitis or epiglottitis.
It’s because of people like Dr Robbins that I’ve never seen the latter, and only once the former.
And they didn’t make any money off of it. Thank you, sir. https://t.co/wr4T9orrXA
— Dr. Dipesh Navsaria (@navsaria) December 19, 2019