Polio in Italy
Metadatos
Afficher la notice complèteAuteur
Fantini, BernardinoEditorial
Universidad de Granada
Materia
Poliomyelitis Italy Vaccination campaigns Human rights Patient's associations Economy of health Poliomielitis Italia Campañas de vacunación Derechos humanos Asociaciones de pacientes Economía de la salud
Date
2012Referencia bibliográfica
Fantini, B. «Polio in Italy». Dynamis: Acta Hispanica Ad Medicinae Scientiarumque Historiam Illustrandam, Vol. 32, Núm. 2, 1, p. 329-359.
Résumé
The history of polio in Italy is relatively short because the particular social and
demographic history of the country has actually compressed the most dramatic history of
the polio epidemic into only 40 years, from the first severe epidemic just before World War
II to the early 1980s, when the epidemic vanished thanks to an effective and country-wide
vaccination campaign. The epidemic, however, had a formidable impact on medicine, public
health, social attitudes and culture. An analysis of this case study can illustrate the impact
of an epidemic of a severe disease on individual and collective life, and at the same time
the efficacy of public health measures against it, and the importance of the social structure,
state and private, in coping with the consequences of the epidemics. In this period, the
attitude towards the handicapped changed from stigma and isolation to social integration,
thanks especially to the changes in health legislation, social action and the initiatives of the
patient’ associations.