When was polio first discovered

The United States has been polio-free since , thanks to a successful vaccination program. However, poliovirus is still a threat in some countries.

Get your child vaccinated on schedule to help keep the U. In the late s, polio outbreaks in the U. Parents were frightened to let their children go outside, especially in the summer when the virus seemed to peak. Travel and commerce between affected cities were sometimes restricted. Public health officials imposed quarantines used to separate and restrict the movement of well people who may have been exposed to a contagious disease to see if they become ill on homes and towns where polio cases were diagnosed.

Introduction of the polio vaccine dropped polio paralysis cases in the U. Polio was once one of the most feared diseases in the U. In the early s, before polio vaccines were available, polio outbreaks caused more than 15, cases of paralysis each year. Following introduction of vaccines—specifically, trivalent inactivated poliovirus vaccine IPV in and trivalent oral poliovirus vaccine OPV in —the number of polio cases fell rapidly to less than in the s and fewer than 10 in the s.

Thanks to the polio vaccine, dedicated health care professionals, and parents who vaccinate their children on schedule, polio has been eliminated in this country for more than 30 years. This means that there is no year-round transmission of poliovirus in the United States. By , he had an early version of his polio vaccine. Salk conducted the first human trials on former polio patients and on himself and his family, and by was ready to announce his findings.

This occurred on the CBS national radio network on the evening of March 25 and two days later in an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Salk became an immediate celebrity.

In , clinical trials using the Salk vaccine and a placebo began on 1. In April , it was announced that the vaccine was effective and safe, and a nationwide inoculation campaign began. Shortly thereafter, tragedy struck in the Western and mid-Western United States, when more than , people were injected with a defective vaccine manufactured at Cutter Laboratories of Berkeley, California.

Thousands of polio cases were reported, children were left paralyzed and 10 died. The incident delayed production of the vaccine, but new polio cases dropped to under 6, in , the first year after the vaccine was widely available. In , an oral vaccine developed by Polish-American researcher Albert Sabin became available, greatly facilitating distribution of the polio vaccine.

Today, there are just a handful of polio cases in the United States every year. He died in La Jolla, California , in But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Following an anonymous tip, police enter a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, an exclusive suburb of San Diego, California, and discover 39 victims of a mass suicide. The deceased—21 women and 18 men of varying ages—were all found lying peaceably in matching dark clothes and Nike In a ceremony at the White House, Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin sign a historic peace agreement, ending three decades of hostilities between Egypt and Israel and establishing diplomatic and commercial ties.

Less than two years A new outbreak of polio spreads from Nigeria to West Africa. Large outbreaks with more than cases wild poliovirus occur in both Tajikistan and Congo. Transmission is stopped by the end of the year in both countries. The globally synchronised switch from trivalent to bivalent oral poliovirus vaccine is implemented in April This is the first part of the phased withdrawal of all oral polio vaccine.

It took somewhat longer for polio to be recognized as a major problem in developing countries. Lameness surveys during the s revealed that the disease was also prevalent in developing countries. As a result, during the s routine immunization was introduced worldwide as part of national immunization programmes, helping to control the disease in many developing countries.

When the GPEI started, polio paralysed more than children worldwide every day. Since then, more than 2. There has also been success in eradicating certain strains of the virus; of the three types of wild polioviruses WPVs , the last case of type 2 was reported in and its eradication was declared in September ; the most recent case of type 3 dates to November and this strain was declared as globally eradicated in October Who we are Our Mission.

History of Polio. Endemic Countries Afghanistan Pakistan. Outbreak Countries. Key At-Risk Countries. Africa Kicks Out Wild Polio. Polio-Free Countries.