In 1950, a full-scale eradication campaign for ringworm (tinea capitis, mycosis) employing ionizing radiation was launched in former Yugoslavia (Serbia today), with UNICEF’s assistance. The number of individuals treated (49,389) was among the highest ever reported in a public health campaign in Europe and North America. Treatment was compulsory, and children were treated in the absence of their parents, with full compliance to the medical authorities, as was common practice under President Tito’s Communist regime. Despite the large numbers of children who were irradiated for ringworm in Yugoslavia, the mass treatment was entirely forgotten. Discovery of documentation of ringworm irradiation in Serbia in 2006 made it possible to publicize the fact, to identify and to locate children who had been treated for ringworm in Serbia who today are aged 65 to 75, and to inform the medical community caring for this population.
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