On the evening of May 17, 2019, Gu Fangzhou, a scientist from Ningbo, won the award for “People Who Moved China” in 2019. The awarding comment given to Gu Fangzhou by the organizing committee of the award says, “It is not cruel to give up one’s own child for the good of other children. It is a doctor’s benevolence. You greet the world with great achievements, which are condensed into a pill of medicine. It is a panacea for curing diseases, representing a pure heart. You are like an ark, carrying the children of New China through the disaster of the polio virus.”

In just a few lines, it tells the remarkable story of this doctor who selflessly dedicated himself to fighting polio. Sugar pills are a kind of live vaccines against polio. Polio, also known as poliomyelitis, often occurs in children under the age of seven and can cause varying degrees of paralysis that cannot be cured. In the 1950s, people in China would turn pale when talking about polio, which may threaten the future of countless families and children.

In 1955, Gu Fangzhou obtained the Candidate of Sciences of the Soviet Academy of Medical Sciences and returned to China to serve his duty. In the same year, China experienced an outbreak of polio. In 1957, Gu led the research team to the PLA Academy of Military Medical Sciences to engage in polio research. In 1960, the trial production of the first phase of Polio vaccine was successful, requiring a dozen of children to undergo clinical trials. That year, Gu Fangzhou’s first child was just born and happened to meet the requirements, so he became a candidate of the trial. Later, the three phases of five million doses of vaccine production were successful and were promoted in 11 cities across the country. By 1965, the “sugar pill” vaccine had been gradually promoted in rural areas throughout the country. Since then, the incidence rate of poliomyelitis in China has declined significantly.