Zabolotny was born on 28 December 1866 in a small village to poor peasants who lived in a two-room house. His father, Kyrylo, was a former serf until the abolition of serfdom five years prior to his son being born, and was married to a woman named Yevheniia. When he was 11, his father died and his uncle took him to
Rostov-on-Don, Russia. He was able to attend the gymnasium, and it became clear that he was intelligent and had a talent for the natural sciences. They came to Rostov-on-Don to stay with the brother of his mother, Makar Myronovych Sauliak, who taught natural science and geography in the city. From 1919 to 1923 he was rector of the
Odesa National Medical University, where he started what is considered the world's first Department of Epidemiology, in 1920. From 1924 to 1928 he was professor at the
Military Medical Academy in Leningrad and in 1928 founded is now called the Zabolotny Institute of Microbiology and Virology, in Kyiv. Zabolotny conducted groundbreaking research on a number of infectious diseases, including
cholera,
diphtheria,
dysentery,
plague,
syphilis, and
typhus, as well as on
gangrene. In 1904, he in order to address sanitary issues in Russia, he wrote to
Duke Peter Alexandrovich of Oldenburg criticizing the lack of sanitary laws in Russia. Having done extensive field work in Northern China, he was an "influential" delegate at the 1911
Mukden Conference where China, forced by the
Manchurian plague that killed 60,000 people, "embrac[ed] a Western approach to medical care, with the intention of promoting public health during the first years of Chinese Republic". He died on 15 December 1929 and was buried in the village where he was born. ==References==