Polio, Iron Lungs and Vaccines
In 1952, the U.S. had the worst outbreak of polio in the nation’s history. Parents were so frightened by the terrifying disease that public places like pools and theaters were shut down. Even schools were closed over fear of transmission. In total, there were approximately 58,000 cases reported that year. Out of those cases, 21,269 were paralyzed and there were 3,145 reported deaths. I was three years old.
In 1916, the year my mother and father were born, a major polio outbreak hit killing over 2000 people in New York City and another 6000 across the country with untold thousands paralyzed for the remainder of their lives.
In 1956, one year after Jonas Salk invented the vaccine for polio, I started school and almost every classroom in the small town of Weatherford Texas had a child on crutches or wearing some form of leg brace. The rest of us sported circular scars on our upper arms, a sign we had been vaccinated. In 1975, I had my first child who received his vaccine via a dropper at age 4, in 1979, the year Rotary International pledged to fight this scourge by vaccinating 6 million people across the Philippines.
In 1988, when my third and last child was 4 years old, Rotary International and the World Health Organization launched the Global Polio Eradication Initiative to end polio. At that point there were well over 350,000 known cases of polio over 125 countries. Today I am fast approaching 70 and to this day there are people my age who live with the assistance of an iron lung due to the disease that ran rampant across our country.
As I listen to the rising number of measles cases currently cropping up across America, I cannot help but think of the children I grew up with whose lives were cut short because of polio. There are stories about individuals who managed to have successful careers and long lives in spite of the disease, and there are survivors still alive today. You can see their stories and read about the impact polio has had on their lives at https://guff.com/last-living-survivors-of-the-iron-lung-are-a-chilling-reminder-why-we-must-vaccinate-our-children
More importantly, you can read about the movement that is on the precipice of removing this disease from the face of the earth forever, Rotary International. You can see a map of where polio thrived from the 80’s to now at https://www.endpolio.org/what-is-polio and you will be able to see how very close we are to completion.
We have not seen a case of polio in the United States since 1979. Measles was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000 however, with the spread of unsubstantiated stories of the measles vaccine causing autism and other learning differences, unprotected individuals are spreading the disease and the number of measles cases in the United States is again rising. Measles, like polio, can be fatal. Indeed, there was a death from measles in the United States in 2015.
The measles/vaccine cause and effect is a prime example why Rotary International and every Rotary across the country is committed to seeing total elimination of polio, perhaps even in this decade. Not doing so will almost certainly guarantee another 200,000 cases worldwide.
I chose to relate the path of polio to my life path to give some weight to the accomplishments of organizations like Rotary International and the impact a movement can have on the quality of our lives. My children reached adulthood unscathed and I am quite certain that are many young people who have no idea the impact this disease has had on the world. Certainly, this is a cautionary tale as we see the impact social media and the 24/365 news cycle has on people. Surprisingly, we have reached a point where the amount of information available to most of us is so massive that a similar effect of a lack of information used to have on our populations.
.As important as it once was to gain an education in order to survive, it now has become discernment and research to validate and substantiate what we hear see and read in order to ensure that we are acting on accurate information and not at the whim of an urban legend or an entity that acts out of a desire to place us at odds with one another. Where our parents encouraged us to always be learning, now we must encourage our children to always check your source.My sources for this piece were: rotaryinternational.org, endpolio.org, cdc.gov/measles, www.mphonline.org, an independent online resource for public health students and guff.com
