Four AC s for medical elite

In 1973 Professor Bishop, along with colleagues from the Royal Children’s Hospital and the University of Melbourne’s microbiology department, found a virus now known as rotavirus. They showed it was the cause of an acute gastroenteritis that hospitalised 10 000 Australian children every year and killed more than half a million children worldwide. As a result, vaccination against “gastro” has been part of the National Immunisation Program for all Australian infants since July 2007, resulting in a drop in hospital admissions of more than 70%.