Polio: Crippling disease drops from 20,000 cases in 1950s to 10 in 1979
Thanks to a vaccine developed in the 1950s, the polio virus has been practically eradicated from the western hemisphere.
John Bailey, health director at the Bear River Health Department, said although polio isn’t completely gone from the world, it is good to see the potential one vaccine can have.
“Polio is an extremely devastating disease,” he said. “Fortunately, the vaccine has made it possible for us to not worry about it nearly as much as when it was prominent years ago.”
According to a flier provided by the health department, a polio epidemic in 1916 killed 6,000 people in the United States and paralyzed nearly 27,000 more.
“In the early 1950s there were more than 20,000 cases of polio each year,” according to the flier.
The polio vaccine enters the body through the mouth and sometimes does not cause a serious illness at all, according to the flier.
“Most people infected with polio were non-symptomatic,” Bailey said. “Many times it was a silent infection.”
According to the flier, the virus causes paralysis in an arm or leg. It can sometimes kill people who get it, usually by paralyzing the muscles that help them breathe.
Bailey said the virus affects the neuromuscular system in most cases, sometimes causing extreme damage.
“The clinical picture was quite varied,” he said. “The most serious cases ranged from paralysis of the limbs to paralysis of involuntary organs like the diaphragm.”
Once the virus had affected the victim and caused paralysis, it was difficult to regain feeling or strength, Bailey said.
“It was very unusual once it occurred to recover from it,” he said.
Bailey emphasized the efficiency of the vaccine developed in 1955.
“The fact that you don’t see it anymore is a testimony of how effective the vaccine was and still is,” he said.
According to the flier from the health department, “The polio vaccination was begun in 1955. By 1960, the number of cases had dropped to about 3,000 and by 1979 there were only about 10.”
Although the vaccine has almost eliminated polio today, there were some complications in the beginning, Bailey said. The inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) was first available as injections and worked very well.
“Later the oral polio vaccine (OPV) was developed as a live-virus vaccine,” he said.
OPV was readily available and much easier to take so it was used widely across the nation. The vaccine had some disadvantages though because it was taken orally and was a live virus, Bailey said.
“The oral vaccine was highly-effective because it started in the gastrointestinal tract,” he said.
The problem was that the virus generally begins and grows in the same part of the body so the oral vaccine was starting some new forms of polio. The natural polio virus waned, but the virus induced by the vaccine started growing, Bailey said.
The biggest problem with the polio virus today is the fact that the world is much closer together.
“A person can be here in Logan one minute and can be anywhere in the United States in a matter of 24 hours,” Bailey said. “This makes the virus a problem everywhere in the world.”
Bailey warned, people cannot just lay off worrying about the issue because the problem is relatively small in this part of the world.
“We cannot be complacent,” he said. “We need to be awarethat it is still an issue in the world.”