The Infectious Disease: Poliomyelitis

Polio also known as poliomyelitis was an infectious disease caused by a virus that occupied the throat and intestinal tract. It spread through person-to-person contact along with spreading through feces, and sneezing from an infected person. Polio affected humanity throughout recorded history, it attacks the nervous system and can cause varying degrees of paralysis Polio used to be very common in the United States and caused severe illness in thousands of people each year. The deiase mostly effected babies and children but some adults also developed late cases of the virus. Even one of the greatest presidents of all time Franklin D. Roosevelt was hit by polio in 1921 and was left paralyzed from the waist down. The creator of the vaccine was Dr. Jonas Salk. Dr.Salk was skilled scientist studying at the University of Pittsburgh and helped create flu vaccines during World War II. He didn’t start researching the polio vaccine until 1948 and only two years later he had an early version of the vaccine. Salk was confident and believed in his vaccine so much he used one of the first tests of the vaccine on himself and his family. March 26, 1953, Dr. Jonas Salk successfully tested a vaccine against poliomyelitis He astonished the world by announcing his vaccine on CBS national.

Polio vaccine was such an amazing advancement because of how well and how fast I worked. On April 1955, the vaccine was proven to be safe, and began spreading nationwide dropping new polio cases dropped to 6,000 in 1957, the first year after the vaccine was widely available. Comparing this number to only 5 years earlier with 58,000 new cases were reported and 3,000 causalities were caused. The numbers continued to drop having polio cases fell to >100 in the 1960s and >10 in the 1970s. Polio has been eliminated from the United States thanks to widespread polio vaccination in this country. Polio was declared eradicated in the U.S in 1979 becoming the first virus to ever do so. Dr. Salks decision not to patient the Polio Vaccine saved millions of lives and essential stopped a widespread epidemic that was considered normal in the U.S.