The Parkville Storytelling Project recognises Professor Ruth Bishop

From the first time Professor Ruth Bishop looked into her microscope and saw the distinctive wheel shape of the rotavirus, she was struck by its beauty.

It was the early 1970s, and Professor Ruth Bishop, then a young bacteriologist, was leading a team of scientists on the Melbourne Children's Campus (The Royal Children's Hospital, Murdoch Children's Research Institute and the University of Melbourne), searching for the cause of childhood gastroenteritis. 

Gastroenteritis was causing the deaths of millions of children around the world. Each year, about 10,000 Australian children were hospitalised with the disease – yet no one had been able to pinpoint the cause.

Professor Bishop had concluded that the infectious agent behind the disease had to be a virus. In 1973, working with colleague Professor Ian Holmes at the University of Melbourne, she and her colleague Professor Graeme Barnes sent intestinal biopsies taken from children with acute gastroenteritis for electron-microscopy examination. 

It was immediately clear the cells were infected with a wheel-like virus. The new virus, named 'rotavirus', was subsequently confirmed to be the cause of the severe diarrhoea that had taken so many young lives.

It was a discovery that would begin a revolution in public health. Now that the primary cause of acute gastroenteritis was known, the search for a vaccine could begin. 

A vaccine against rotavirus, delivered at six to eight weeks of age, became part of the vaccination schedule in Australia in 2007. 

Since the introduction of the vaccine, hospital admissions for severe gastroenteritis in Australia have dropped to fewer than 2,000 a year. 

However, more than two-thirds of the world's children still do not receive a rotavirus vaccine, most living in low-or-middle-income countries.  

Now Murdoch Children's Research Institute, where Professor Bishop is an esteemed honorary fellow, has developed a vaccine that can be administered in the first few days of life.  

The new oral rotavirus vaccine, RV3-BB, will be delivered at birth and provide the earliest possible protection against the virus.

While there is still work to be done on rotavirus, Professor Bishop's work has saved millions of lives.

Professor Ruth Bishop is known for her humility and tenacity. In 2013 she became the first woman to be awarded the prestigious Florey Medal and in 2019 was appointed a Companion to the Order of Australia.

Illustrator: Antra Svarcs

The Parkville Storytelling Project 

In 2019, the Metro Tunnel Creative Program ran workshops with numerous organisations across the Parkville precinct to come up with a theme that resonated with all institutions in the area.

The organisations agreed that showcasing the precinct's 'unsung heroes' would be a great way to share some noteworthy stories that people may not have heard.

Around 20 organisations contributed information, and these were turned into stories by local writer Sonja Dechian. The stories were then given to local illustrators who engaged with the written pieces to bring them to life in their own creative way.  

A new series of artworks, including Antra Svarcs illustration of Professor Ruth Bishop are now on display on the construction hoardings in Grattan Street around the Parkville Station site.