Children — some as young as toddlers just learning to walk, some well into their adolescence — with metal braces caging each leg, crutches tucked up under their armpits to hold them upright, while still others sat wheelchair bound. And they were the lucky ones.
Some children disappeared into the gaping mechanical maws of iron lungs, only their small heads visible, cradled on thin white pillows, as the enormous machine performed for them the bodily functions necessary to survive.
These are the images, in black and white, that haunt us from a bygone era. The word “polio” belongs to these decades-old photographs and middle school research projects on Jonas Salk and Franklin Roosevelt.
But this dreaded childhood disease — once thought eradicated in Western countries and tamed abroad thanks to organizations like End Polio Now — is making a devastating comeback.
It started with a strange case in New York. A young man — who lived in Rockland County, where about 60% of the population is inoculated for polio, but was himself unvaccinated — presented with the disease’s most severe symptoms: weakness and paralysis.
It’s believed the young man contracted the virus from someone who’d had the oral polio vaccine. The OPV uses a live, weakened copy of the virus. Though it has not been used in the U.S. or the UK since the early 2000s, it’s still used abroad. Generally, OPV is safe; the potential danger comes when OPV’s weakened live virus is introduced among unvaccinated/under-vaccinated communities or immunocompromised individuals. In that case — much like the COVID variants we’ve been battling — it can mutate and strengthen back to a more severe form and spread.
Unfortunately, the young man in Rockland County is just the “tip of the iceberg,” according to the CDC’s Dr. José Romero. No other cases have presented themselves, but samples taken from wastewater in Rockland County and neighboring Orange County show the poliovirus has spread.
Last week, health experts in the UK announced poliovirus was found in wastewater samples taken from multiple London boroughs. The virus is spreading through the city, but there are no known cases yet.
How can that be? The majority of polio cases are asymptomatic or mild infections, which are still contagious. That’s how polio spread like wildfire in the early- to mid-1900s. And it’s why vaccination has been — and is now again — essential to stopping the spread.
Children should receive three to four doses of inactivated poliovirus vaccine by the time they’re 6 years old. Adults who aren’t vaccinated or aren’t sure should receive three doses. Similarly, adults who only had one or two doses as a child should get the remaining doses.
The UK has taken the initiative and will offer booster shots to all children 1 to 9 years old; hopefully, the U.S. will follow suit. Polio cannot be cured — it can only be prevented. If vaccination numbers don’t get back up to 80% consistently nationwide, leg braces and iron lungs will be back before we know it.
