The management of the coronavirus pandemic required huge worldwide vaccination efforts. In this endeavour, healthcare workers faced the twofold challenge of reaching remote areas, and persuading people to take the vaccine. As it happens, this is nothing new in the history of medicine. Health workers may indeed continue to take inspiration from Francisco Xavier Balmis, a Spanish physician of the 19th century who realised the importance of Jenner's vaccine against smallpox, and led a successful expedition to administer the vaccines in the Spanish colonial possessions of the Western hemisphere and Asia. This article presents a biographical sketch of Balmis, focusing on his expedition.
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