Polio Banished
30 years, 5 months ago

Polio Banished

LA Times  

Your editorial “A Frightful Disease Is Banished” elicited memories of a terrifying day in 1950 when we rushed our 13-month-old son to the Communicable Diseases building at Los Angeles County Hospital, where we were given the dreaded diagnosis, “polio.” After four months of daily visits, he was able to be removed from the iron lung and was breathing without assistance. There are memories, too, of many others--the brave, young woman whose two young children and husband were patients there, the beautiful little girl named Claudia who stared at us from the iron lung next to our son’s. What a wonderful day when the World Health Organization declared the Western Hemisphere to be free from polio! Thank you, Dr. Jonas Salk and Dr. Albert Sabin, from our hearts.

 memories  iron  banished  son  dr  yearsthere  day  thank  lung  polio  young

History of this topic

Letters to the Editor: I’m a polio survivor. RFK Jr. shouldn’t have say in the nation’s health policies
3 months ago

Letters to the Editor: I’m a polio survivor. RFK Jr. shouldn’t have say in the nation’s health policies

LA Times  

To the editor: I am a survivor of bulbar polio; I contracted it when I was 5 years old in 1946. I knew my children and countless others would never face what I went through, or face death or an iron lung. I can’t describe how angry I was to find out that an advisor to Robert Kennedy Jr. is …

Fears of a polio resurgence in the US have health officials on high alert – a virologist explains the history of this dreaded disease
2 years, 6 months ago

Fears of a polio resurgence in the US have health officials on high alert – a virologist explains the history of this dreaded disease

The Hindu  

Fears of polio gripped the US in the mid-20th century. Since then, collective fear of the virus has been mostly lost to history – many people alive today are lucky enough not to know someone who has experienced polio. So when news broke in July 2022 that an unvaccinated adult man in New York had contracted polio – the first …

Polio Is Back in the US and UK. Here’s How That Happened
2 years, 7 months ago

Polio Is Back in the US and UK. Here’s How That Happened

Wired  

The discovery that polio has partially paralyzed a young man in a New York suburb feels wearying, yet shocking. “We have been saying that until we can get this fully eradicated, we are all at risk.” Public health experts consider this an emergency, because polio paralysis cases represent the tip of an immunological iceberg: For every person paralyzed, at least …

World Polio Day 2020: Everything You Need to Know About Polio
4 years, 5 months ago

World Polio Day 2020: Everything You Need to Know About Polio

News 18  

World Polio Day is observed every year on 24 October to commemorate the birth of Jonas Salk, the American virologist who helped create the world’s first safe and effective polio vaccine. Salk’s vaccine was invented in 1955 but it was with the establishment of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in 1988 by the World Health Organization, Rotary International and others …

Ending polio: ‘We’re on the verge of making history’
9 years, 5 months ago

Ending polio: ‘We’re on the verge of making history’

CNN  

Editor’s Note: Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann serves as CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Story highlights Africa has gone a year without a child paralyzed by wild poliovirus Africa's success should energize the world's efforts to end polio forever, says Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann "We have never been closer to wiping out this terrible disease," she says CNN — A …

One more year of nil case and it will be ‘Goodbye, Polio’
12 years, 2 months ago

One more year of nil case and it will be ‘Goodbye, Polio’

The Hindu  

It is two years since India has had a polio case. One more before the country can say ‘Goodbye, Polio.’ The battle against the wild polio virus is poised interestingly in the nation that, not long ago, in 2009, accounted for nearly half the world’s polio cases. Three years of absence of polio cases, caused by the wild polio virus, …

Polio Survivors
30 years, 5 months ago

Polio Survivors

LA Times  

I would like to write a response to your editorial “A Frightful Disease is Banished”. There are many, many thousands of survivors of the polio epidemic that occurred before the discovery of the miraculous vaccine by Dr. Jonas Salk and Dr. Albert Sabin. Most of these thousands of survivors are now suffering with an unforeseen condition known as post-polio syndrome, …

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