Polio

Wilma Rudolph Polio

Polio (also called poliomyelitis) is a contagious, historically devastating disease that was virtually eliminated from the Western hemisphere in the second half of the 20th century. Although polio has plagued humans since ancient times, its most extensive outbreak occurred in the first half of the 1900s before the vaccination created by Jonas Salk became widely available in 1955.



At the height of the polio epidemic in 1952, nearly 60,000 cases with more than 3,000 deaths were reported in the United States alone.

  

 Franklin Delenor Roosevelt, a former president of the United States, was one of the victims of the disease. This is one of the rare photographs of him in a wheelchair. He avoided being seen in it because he did not want to be perceived as weak. He suffered with polio his entire presidency.

However, with the widespread vaccination, wild-type polio, or polio occurring through natural infection, was eliminated from the United States by 1979 and the Western Hemisphere by 1991.

POLIO NOW Polio remains an endemic in three countries including: Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan. In 2011, Afghanistan and Pakistan have both seen alarming increases in polio cases, and polio virus from Pakistan re-infected China (which had been polio-free since 1999). In Africa, Angola, Chad and Democratic Republic of the Congo,which were previously polio-free, have had active polio transmission with outbreaks in West and Central Africa in the past 12 months.  

As long as polio exists anywhere, it remains a threat everywhere. It is preventable!