New York counties gear up to fight a polio outbreak among the unvaccinated

This carefully-worded and designed infographic from Rockland County, NY describes — in English, Spanish, Haitian Creole, and Yiddish — what polio is and that immunization is the best way to protect yourself and others. (Ari Daniel for NPR)

Polio is the disease most people thought we had put behind us here in the United States. But earlier this summer, an individual in Rockland County, N.Y., contracted the virus likely from exposure in this country, and ended up paralyzed.

The last time there was community transmission of polio in the U.S. was 1979. The Americas were declared polio free in 1994. Though it's just one case of paralysis at the moment, public health officials — both locally and nationally — are taking the news very seriously.