2020, Food and Drug Administration
Long-Term Impacts
Pasteurization
Pasteur’s fermentation process of heating wine (to prevent it from spoiling) is still applied within today’s food industries. The Food and Drug Administration regularly communicates pasteurization regulations, being applied to a diverse variety of food products such as juices and canned foods. Now, consumers understand pasteurization helps to prevent disease and foodborne illnesses.
2014, Virginia Department of Health
" Raw milk (i.e. not boiled or pasteurized) should be avoided because of the risk of disease transmission. Fermented milk products (e.g. yogurt) hold promise for reducing the risk of illness due to contamination, as they are more resistant to bacterial growth... "
~ World Health Organization
Contributions to Science
The communication of germ theory inspires researchers to explore the ways that microorganisms impact disease.
This has resulted in ways like utilizing public mandates to prevent the spread of disease and surgeons applying sanitary methods during surgeries.
Thereby, Pasteur contributed to the fields of epidemiology, microbiology, and immunology.
Surgery
" Globally, hundreds of millions of people are affected every year by avoidable infections in health care (health care-associated infections, HAIs)...Through knowledge, best practices and infrastructures improvement, infection prevention and control (IPC) aims to prevent harm due to HAI to patients and health workers. Sterilization and decontamination of instruments and medical devices play a very important role in the prevention of HAIs… Following recent threats caused by widespread epidemics and increasing awareness about the spread of antimicrobial resistance, several countries are paying more attention and investing resources to strengthening IPC infrastructures and improving practices. "
~ World Health Organization
Take Matters into Your Own Hands--Wash Them!, 2020, Library of Congress
Keep Your Distance & Prolong Existence, 2020, Library of Congress
Help Stop COVID-19, 2020, Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services
" All invasive procedures involve contact by a medical device or surgical instrument...A major risk of all such procedures is the introduction of pathogens that can lead to infection. Failure to properly disinfect or sterilize equipment carries not only the risk associated with breach of host barriers but also person-to-person transmission...Thus, achieving disinfection and sterilization through the proper cleaning of used medical devices followed by proper use of disinfectants and sterilization practices is essential for ensuring that medical and surgical instruments do not transmit pathogens to patients. "
~ David J. Weber MD, MPH, William A. Rutala PhD, MPH
Surgical Aseptic Technique and Sterile Field, 2016, Alberta Health Services
Pursuit for Vaccines
Widespread vaccination efforts have eradicated diseases like Rinderpest and Polio.
Scientists continue to conduct research and communicate their findings to identify new pathogens, while also applying their knowledge to develop vaccines. It emphasizes the importance of vaccines to protect against disease for current, and for future generations.
" As a result, global incidence of polio has decreased by 99.9%... An estimated 16 million people today are walking who would otherwise have been paralysed by the disease, and more than 1.5 million people are alive, whose lives would otherwise have been lost. "
~ Global Polio Eradication Initiative
Influenza Vaccine Doses Distributed in the United States, By Season, 2020, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
How Rinderpest was Eradicated, 2018, Our World in Data
Influence
1895, Wellcome Collection
" No greater advance has perhaps ever been made in the medicine of man and animals, than that which has taken place during this half of the nineteenth century; and to none among those who have contributed to this result is more credit due than to Louis Pasteur, by whom the greatest discoveries in the world of microscopic organisms have been made, the solution of intensely intricate and important problems effected…demonstrated in a manner which only genius of the order could suggest and execute. "
~ George Fleming