Poliomyelitis, often called polio or infantile paralysis, is an acute, viral, infectious disease spread from person to person, primarily through the fecal or oral route. Polio is a very dangerous virus that has a laundry list of effects. Polio can cause temporary or permanent muscle paralysis, disability, and deformities of the hips, ankles, legs and feet. Although polio can cause paralysis and death, the vast majority of
people who are infected with the polio virus don't become sick and are
never aware they've been infected with polio.
Hospital filled with patients in the "iron lung" to help support breathing.
In the U.S., the last case of naturally occurring polio happened in
1979. Today, despite a concerted global eradication campaign, polio virus
continues to affect children and adults in Afghanistan, Pakistan and
some African countries. Just recently on May 5 2014, the World Health Organization declared a public health emergency of international concern, due to the renewed spread of polio. The outbreaks of the disease in
Asia, Africa and the Middle East were considered "extraordinary".
An injected vaccine, using inactivated polio virus, was made for polio in 1952 by Jonas Salk and announced to the world by Dr Thomas Francis Junior on April 12, 1955. An oral vaccine was developed by Albert Sabin using attenuated polio virus. Human trials of the oral vaccine began in 1957, and it was licensed in 1962. The survival of the virus in the environment for an extended period of
time appears to be remote. Mice and a few other animals are the only organisms they have found in the environment that carry the polio virus. Therefore, interruption of person to person
transmission of the virus by vaccination is the critical step in global polio eradication. The two vaccines have eradicated polio from most countries in the world, and reduced the worldwide incidence from an estimated 350,000 cases in 1988 to just 223 cases in 2012.
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