The Great Serum Run

Nome was a small town in Alaska, in the far north of America, with about 1,400 people. In winter, life there was hard. From November, the sea was ice, so no ship could come. There was no road and no train to the town. Planes in 1925 were simple and open — in the extreme cold, their engines did not work. For seven months, the town was alone.

The town had one doctor. In January 1925, children started to come to him. They were ill: hot, tired, with very bad throats. Then one small boy died, and the doctor understood the terrible truth. It was diphtheria — a dangerous illness that moves fast from person to person, and it is worst for children.

There was good medicine for diphtheria: a serum. But the doctor's serum was too old, and the new serum did not arrive before the ice came. Without it, many people in Nome were going to die. On 22 January, the doctor sent a radio message to all of America: "We need serum. Please help us — fast." The whole country heard it. But how do you bring medicine to a town that ships, trains and planes cannot reach?

Serum was found in a hospital far to the south. A train could bring it part of the way — but from the train station to Nome, there were still 674 miles (more than 1,000 kilometres) of snow and ice. The post normally needed 25 days for this trip. The serum was only good for a few days. There was only one answer: dog sleds — and not one, but many. Twenty drivers and about 150 dogs made a relay: each team ran one part of the way, day and night, and gave the serum to the next team. Like a race, but the prize was a town full of children.

The weather that week was the worst in twenty years: minus 50 degrees, and storms so strong that drivers could not see their own dogs. The first driver arrived with a black, frozen face, and some of his dogs died from the cold. But the serum moved on, hour after hour, from team to team.

The longest and most dangerous part went to the best driver in Alaska, Leonhard Seppala, and his lead dog Togo — twelve years old, small, and very intelligent. To save time, Seppala did something no other driver wanted to do: he crossed the frozen sea at night, in a storm. The ice there can break, and then the water takes you away. Togo found the way in the dark and brought the team across. Seppala and Togo ran about 260 miles — four times more than any other team.

The last part of the way went to a driver called Gunnar Kaasen and his lead dog Balto. They drove into a terrible snow storm. Kaasen could not see his dogs in front of him. One time, the wind turned the sled over — and the box with the serum fell into the deep snow! Kaasen took off his gloves and dug in the snow with his bare hands until he found it. At half past five in the morning on 2 February 1925, his tired team arrived in Nome. The serum was frozen — but it was safe, and it worked. The relay had run 674 miles in five and a half days. The illness was stopped. The children of Nome were saved.

Then something funny happened. Balto — the dog that ran the last part — became world-famous. His picture was in every newspaper. He travelled around America, and in New York they built a statue of him, which you can still see today. But Togo — the older dog that ran the longest and most dangerous part — got almost nothing. His driver, Seppala, was sad and angry about it all his life. He said the newspapers gave the prize to the wrong dog.

Today, history is fairer. Most people now say that Togo was the true hero of the Serum Run, and he has his own statue and his own films. Every year, a famous dog-sled race in Alaska remembers the run of 1925. And the biggest result? The story helped doctors give vaccinations to children everywhere — and today, the illness that almost killed Nome has nearly disappeared from the world.