Polio is a highly infectious viral disease that invades the nervous system and can trigger total paralysis in a matter of hours. It mainly targets children under age 5, and at one time disabled and killed thousands of American children every year. Today, all that is a distant memory. The World Health Organization recently estimated that, thanks to polio vaccines, "More than 20 million people are able to walk today who would otherwise have been paralyzed. An estimated 1.5 million childhood deaths have been prevented through the systematic administration of vitamin A during polio immunization activities."
That breakthrough was largely the work of Dr. Jonas Salk, the American virologist who developed one of the first polio vaccines. A year before Salk died in 1995, polio was considered eradicated in North and South America and today cases have decreased by 99% globally. There were just six cases reported in 2021.
