New York Primary Care and Family Practice Medical Clinic | UHS

The Polio Vaccine Is Turning 70. Photos Show The Last Outbreak In The US.

Updated 2025-04-12T15:36:01Z

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On April 12, 1955, researchers announced the first polio vaccine, which was instantly approved.

Before vaccines were available, polio caused 15,000 cases of paralysis in the US each year. 

The US eliminated the disease in 1979, but it hasn't been fully eradicated worldwide.

"Safe, effective, and potent."

That's how Thomas Francis Jr. Of the University of Michigan School of Public Health announced the arrival of Jonas Salk's polio vaccine on April 12, 1955, to a stunned and grateful public.

"People compared it to VE Day and VJ Day, the amount of instant joy, celebration," Jerry Joyce, president of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, told Business Insider.

Seventy years ago, newspapers dusted off their largest typefaces, not used since World War II, to cover the medical breakthrough. Less than a week later, a mass vaccine campaign kicked into gear.

It worked. The vaccines helped eliminate the disease from the US in 1979. 

Before then, in the 1950s specifically, cases of poliovirus ran rampant in the US. Hospitals overflowed with disabled or severely ill patients, according to the National Library of Medicine.

During the outbreak's peak in 1952, polio infections caused 20,000 cases of paralysis. Families isolated in fear because of how easily it spreads among kids.

Doctors warn that pausing polio vaccinations could help the disease regain its foothold.

Photos show what happened during polio outbreaks in the US and how the vaccine was developed.

A virus that affects nerves in the spinal cord or brain stem causes polio. A young girl using an abacus in a bed at the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York, circa 1950. Douglas Grundy/Three Lions/Getty Images

Polio mainly affects children under the age of 5, though adults can contract it, too. It's spread through direct contact with bodily fluids.

"A backyard swimming pool would be a very bad place unless it was really well-chlorinated and everyone was careful," Joyce said.

Most people only have mild symptoms, but one in 200 cases causes irreversible paralysis. Between 5% and 10% of paralyzed patients die when muscles used for breathing can no longer move, according to the World Health Organization. 

The US had several polio epidemics in the 20th century, including in 1916 and 1937. A doctor removed special casts to examine a polio patient's legs in 1916. Bettmann via Getty Images

Polio was first identified in 1909, though it had been around for centuries, and the US had a serious outbreak in 1916, which started in New York. 

At the time, doctors understood very little about the disease, including how to treat and prevent it. 

An estimated 6,000 people died and 21,000 had resulting paralysis from the 1916 outbreak.

There were a series of polio outbreaks in the 1940s and 1950s. Two-month-old Martha Ann Murray was watched over by a nurse in 1952. AP Photo

The number of polio cases rose from eight per 100,000 in 1944 to 37 per 100,000 in 1952, according to Yale Medical Magazine. During that period, about 60,000 children were contracting the disease each year.

There was an increase in people over the age of 10 getting the virus, too. 

Treatments for polio included hot wool and physical therapy. Larry Becker drew a hospital floor plan using his right foot in 1955. AP Photo

Early on, some doctors would put patients in full-body casts, which could make paralysis permanent. 

Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was diagnosed with polio in 1921, when he was 39, sought relief by taking dips in Georgia's warm springs. 

During a 1940s polio outbreak, the Hickory Emergency Infantile Paralysis Hospital in North Carolina tried treating patients with physical therapy and boiled wool "hot packs" for the skin.

Patients with severe cases lived their entire lives in iron lungs. A nurse watched over a boy with polio in an iron lung in 1955. Kirn Vintage Stock/Corbis/Getty Images

Bellows inside the large metal box provided suction to help patients breathe when they could no longer do so on their own. The device was first used to save the life of an 8-year-old patient in 1928. 

"Kids could be in that for days, weeks, even months," Joyce said. "And sometimes kids didn't come out."

Some famous people contracted polio as children, including Mia Farrow and Alan Alda. John Farrow carried daughter Mia out of the hospital in 1954. Bettmann via Getty Images

Farrow, the daughter of director John Farrow and "Tarzan" actor Maureen O'Sullivan, became ill during an LA polio outbreak in the summer of 1954.

"What I saw will never leave me — in the hospitals and in the public wards for contagious diseases," Farrow said in 2000. 

Roosevelt started the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, now known as the March of Dimes, to find a cure for polio. Children with polio met Basil O'Connor, president of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. Matty Zimmerman/AP Photo

Roosevelt founded the organization with his former law partner, Basil O'Connor, to help fund research into a polio vaccine. 

Roosevelt used a wheelchair, mainly in private, while he was president.

Celebrities such as Grace Kelly and Joan Crawford helped promote campaigns for a vaccine. Grace Kelly with Mary Koloski at a March of Dimes event in 1955. API/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

These campaigns helped raise half of all donations to health charities in the US, PBS reported.

Jonas Salk was one of the researchers working on a polio vaccine. Developer of the polio vaccine, Dr. Jonas Salk in a laboratory in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1954. AP Photo

At the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Salk began developing a vaccine in the early 1950s.

He grew polioviruses on cultures of monkeys' kidney cells and then used formaldehyde to kill or inactivate the virus. "The immune system recognizes that as foreign and makes antibodies, and that's the vaccine," Joyce said.

When he injected the dead virus into live monkeys, it protected them from the disease, according to the Science History Institute.

Salk was confident enough in his vaccine to give it to his own family. Jonas Salk, wife Donna, and sons Jonathan, Darrel, and Peter in 1957. Bettmann/Getty Images

After testing the vaccine on himself and other members of the lab, Salk gave it to his wife and three children, according to University of Washington Magazine.

"The kids were among the very first humans to get the vaccine," Joyce said.

After his vaccine proved successful on monkeys, Salk began testing children. Jonas Salk gave a vaccine to a child in the 1950s. Mondadori via Getty Images

Salk then injected children who had already had polio. He noted that their antibody levels rose after vaccination, a promising sign that it helped the body fight the infection. 

Roosevelt's foundation also backed another potential prevention method, gamma globulin. A line of children and parents waited to be immunized with gamma globulin in 1953. Paul E. Thomson/AP Photo

In the early 1950s, over 220,000 children were injected with gamma globulin, proteins in blood plasma that are rich in antibodies. The hope was that the serum would boost kids' immune systems and keep them from contracting polio. 

After looking at the data, though, a committee of epidemiologists and other experts concluded that gamma globulin wasn't effective. 

The gamma globulin trials helped pave the way for similar trials with Salk's vaccine. Salk gave a shot of the polio vaccine to a girl during test trials in 1954. Bettmann/Getty Images

In 1954, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis sponsored a trial to test Salk's vaccine. 

Nearly 2 million children between 6 and 9 years old participated. They were called "Polio Pioneers."

Participants were divided into three groups: the first group received the vaccine, the second received a placebo, and the third received neither the vaccine nor a placebo. 

The following year, in 1955, the vaccine was declared 90% effective against Types 2 and 3 poliovirus. It was 60% to 70% effective against Type 1.

Nearly 2 million children participated in the trials, and the vaccine was found to be 90% effective. Dr. Jonas Salk on a plane's stairway with his family. AP Photo

It took mere hours for Salk's vaccine to be licensed for use after the announcement of its efficacy.

At a press conference on April 12, 1955, UofM's Francis called the vaccine "safe, effective, and potent."

It was headline news.

"The story has blanketed the front pages of all the papers I have seen along a 1,600-mile route from New York to Saint Louis, to Memphis and Dallas," Alistair Cooke reported for The Guardian at the time. 

Though he had some detractors, Salk won many Americans' trust. Joans Salk's polio vaccine in 1955. AP Photo

"Jonas was a national hero," Joyce said. To Salk's dismay, people treated him like a celebrity, similar to aviator Charles Lindbergh.

"The amount of adulation was overwhelming and not particularly welcomed by him," Joyce said.

Vaccine distribution began almost immediately. Polio vaccines as they were shipped to Europe in 1955. Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

NFIP had already funded facilities that could start producing the vaccine right away. The US sent some vaccines to Europe, and some countries started up their own productions. 

Children would receive a series of shots to complete the vaccination process. Eight-year-old Ann Hill got the polio vaccine days after Salk's announcement that it was effective. AP Photo

Children needed three shots, each costing between $3 and $5 (around $35-$59 today), according to The Conversation.

Shortly after the vaccine program began, a tragic incident caused several deaths. Vaccines were prepared to be distributed around the West Coast from Cutter Laboratories in April 1955. Ernest K. Bennett/AP Photo

One of the facilities manufacturing the vaccine, Cutter Laboratories, had kept the live polio virus in hundreds of thousands of doses.

In April 1955, over 400,000 children received the improperly prepared vaccines. The mistake led to 260 cases of polio-based paralysis and several deaths, according to the National Institutes of Health. 

Despite the incident at Cutter Laboratories, hundreds of thousands of children were vaccinated in 1955. The son of the US Surgeon General Leonard McCormick "Bobo" Scheele received the polio vaccine in May 1955. Byron Rollins/AP Photo

The incident at Cutter Laboratories panicked many parents and the vaccine was pulled from the market on April 27, 1955. 

However, after a massive effort to recheck all the vaccines confirmed they were safe to use, immunization resumed on May 15, 1955. Worldwide, hundreds of thousands of children received the vaccine. 

Elvis got the vaccine backstage during "The Ed Sullivan Show." In October 1956, Elvis Presley received the polio vaccine in New York City. AP Photo

If people were hesitant to have their children vaccinated, Elvis may have helped persuade them. After he got the jab in the fall of 1956, many followed suit. 

Within six months, 80% of America's youngest generation were vaccinated, Scientific American reported in 2021. 

Other celebrities, including Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, also promoted the vaccine to help inform as many people as possible. A nurse prepared children for the shot. Bettmann / Contributor / Getty Images

Roosevelt's foundation was heavily involved in promoting the vaccine and recruited celebrities like Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald for their campaigns.

"There was a very early recognition that you couldn't just have white people talking about the vaccine," Stacey D. Stewart, former president and CEO of the March of Dimes, told NPR in 2021. 

The polio vaccine quickly began protecting people against the virus. Edward Scheffler with his mother after traveling by railroad in 1957. AP Photo

Between 1953 and 1957, cases in the US dropped from 35,000 to 5,300 a year, the BBC reported.

Meanwhile, Salk's rival, Albert Sabin, was still working on his own polio vaccine. Patient Mark Stacey was visited by Albert Sabin (right) and Dr. Walter Langsam (left) in 1959. Gene Smith/AP Photo

Sabin disagreed with Salk's method of using a vaccine with a killed virus. Instead, he preferred a live, yet weakened form that could be taken by mouth instead of injected. 

Once Sabin showed his version was effective using a trial in the Soviet Union, it was approved for use in the US in 1961.  

Because Sabin's vaccine was inexpensive and easy to administer, many countries began using the oral method. In fact, the song "A Spoonful of Sugar (Helps the Medicine Go Down)" in the 1964 film "Mary Poppins" was inspired by Sabin's polio vaccine.

A combination of the two vaccines helped nearly eradicate polio worldwide. An emergency polio ward in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1955. AP Photo

During the 2010s, the world eradicated polio Types 2 and 3. Only Type 1 remains. The World Health Organization hopes to wipe out the final strain by 2026, but that goal is impossible without polio vaccines. 

This story was originally published on August 13, 2022, and updated on December 16, 2024, and April 12, 2025. Jake Johnson contributed to a previous version of this post. 

Introduction Of The Polio Vaccine 70 Years Ago Changed Lives

FILE - In this Oct. 7, 1954, file photo, Dr. Jonas Salk, developer of the polio vaccine, holds a rack of test tubes in his lab in Pittsburgh.

Advertisements for freezers, lounge chairs and remedies for itching, gas and constipation were on the fifth page of Uniontown's Evening Standard on April 16, 1952, which was a Wednesday. As they scanned the page, readers were also greeted with a listing of admissions and discharges at Fayette County hospitals and news of a band concert at German High School.

There was also a dispatch from the Associated Press in the middle of the page that carried the headline "Discovery Points to End of Polio."

The story, written by Howard W. Blakeslee, the agency's science writer, outlined how researchers at Johns Hopkins and Yale universities discovered that polio "strikes first in our blood instead of our nerves" and that "there is a possibility that a vaccine can be made" that would prevent the viral disease that had bedevilled humankind since at least the days of ancient Egypt.

Almost three years to the day after the article appeared, on April 12, 1955, readers of the Evening Standard were greeted with an urgent headline displayed across the newspaper's front page: "Salk Polio Vaccine Gets Approval."

A subhead below the headline said a vaccine had been found to be safe and effective in "exhaustive tests," and that Dr. Jonas Salk, the researcher and virologist who developed the vaccine, believed it would offer "complete triumph over polio terror."

It did.

The overwhelming majority of people alive in the world today were born after the polio vaccine was introduced, so have no recollection of how the fear of polio once cast a shadow on everyday life.

"Every time one of us kids came down with something, there was always the thought that it was polio and life as we'd known it was over," said Paul Carson, an East Finley Township resident. "There was a huge amount of anxiety wiped out by vaccines."

Seventy years ago, before those vaccines reached the public, there were close to 58,000 cases of polio in the United States every year. In 1952, the year the Evening Standard reported on the potential of a polio vaccine, 3,000 people died in an outbreak in the United States, the worst outbreak in the country's history.

But by 1957, after the introduction of the vaccine, the number of cases plummeted to just 5,600. And four years after that, there were fewer than 200. By 1969, not a single death from polio was reported in the U.S. Around the world, polio cases have dropped by 99% since 1988 thanks to efforts to get people vaccinated. Polio is now endemic in just Pakistan and Afghanistan.

When Salk died in 1995, The New York Times said his vaccine "changed medical history, preventing many thousands of cases of crippling illness and saving thousands of lives. In the United States, the vaccine soon ended the yearly threat of epidemics and the toll of paralysis and death."

What exactly is polio?

The word polio is itself shorthand for poliomyelitis, a virus that is highly infectious. A headache, fever and sore throat can develop for those who come down with the disease, with death and paralysis occurring in the most severe cases. Sometimes, for those who came down with polio in the years before the vaccine gained a foothold, the paralysis would be so acute that they would have to spend their days in mechanical respirators that came to be called iron lungs because the muscles responsible for breathing had become paralyzed.

Many well-known figures born before the development of the polio vaccine were diagnosed with it, including "Godfather" director Francis Ford Coppola, who was bedridden for a year, and singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, who had a weakened left hand as a result. A decade before he became the U.S. President in 1932, Franklin Roosevelt was diagnosed with polio. Roosevelt was eventually able to resume his career, becoming governor of New York in 1928 before being elected to the White House four times. The public was aware that Roosevelt had been afflicted with polio, but the president and his handlers worked assiduously to downplay Roosevelt's infirmities – he was almost never seen in a wheelchair – and the reporters and photographers who covered the chief executive never took photos of him walking with assistance at public events.

After Roosevelt was diagnosed with polio, it was suspected that he caught it when he made a summertime visit to a Boy Scout camp in New York. Polio tended to spread in the summer and fall before the vaccine, and the warm weather months came to be called "polio season." Before and during polio season, newspapers would routinely run feature articles on how individuals and families could stay safe during that time.

An editorial headlined "The Polio Season" was in the July 17, 1952, edition of Canonsburg's Daily Notes newspaper. It noted that an outbreak had occurred in Texas, and that "the people of the nation can help medical science win the battle against infantile paralysis by not being panicky when the killer strikes…"

It continued, "Besides remaining calm, there are some precautionary measures that should be taken when polio strikes a community. Get plenty of rest, avoid over-fatigue, eat fresh foods, avoid crowds, prevent children from using the same eating or drinking utensils or washcloths, watch for sore throat, upset stomach and tenderness and stiffness in the neck and back."

It also reminded readers, "Follow your doctor's advice about nose and throat operations and teeth extractions during polio season."

Outside of polio season, fundraising to prevent polio and to assist those who were confronting it became a regular part of the calendar. Six months after its editorial on polio season, The Daily Notes had a front page story, "Whistles Will Herald Start of Mothers' March on Polio." It reported how, on Jan. 28, 1953, factory whistles, church bells and sirens would sound in Canonsburg to kick off an annual fundraising drive for the March of Dimes, which Roosevelt founded and was initially established to combat polio.

Committees were established in Canonsburg and other communities throughout the country to coordinate the fundraisers. Residents were told to leave their porch lights on for a "porchlight parade" if they wanted a volunteer to come to their doors to collect a donation.

"When the sirens are sounded, each family is asked to signify its willingness to give by switching on the porchlight," the Daily Notes story stated. "To the mother whose responsibility it is to call, it will act as a welcoming beacon, a request for her to stop and pick up a contribution to the fight against polio."

But even while families in the early 1950s were trying to find ways to protect themselves from polio, Salk was at work on a vaccine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. He was scrutinizing the different types of polio viruses and trying to come up with a vaccine. He used formaldehyde to kill off a poliovirus growing in kidney tissue taken from monkeys. Salk believed that a killed version of the virus could be used in a vaccine to spur the human body to deploy antibodies against a polio virus without actually causing the disease.

Salk tested the vaccine on himself and his family and almost 2 million children before it was determined "safe," "effective," "potent," and "a brilliant victory over the disease." Those are the words The Daily Herald in Monongahela used to describe the breakthrough in its April 12, 1955, edition. The newspaper also reported that inoculations of children in public and parochial schools would begin as soon as the federal government signed off on the vaccine and supplies were made available.

"Consent slips for inoculation of local first and second graders will be sent home with students today," a report in the newspaper said.

Within days, The Morning Herald in Uniontown was reporting that the vaccine would first be administered in Fayette County on April 27 or April 28, and that Dr. A.E. Wright, the county's medical director, was overseeing the effort. It also reported on a delay of vaccine shipments coming to Pennsylvania because inspections had been held up.

One Washington County boy played a particularly crucial role in the vaccine's development. Blood from Jimmy Sarkett, who hailed from Daisytown, was used by Salk because he had the rarest type of polio virus after contracting it in 1950. Sarkett, who died in 2017, told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in 2005 that Salk was "quiet, a very nice man."

On the last day of April 1955, Sarkett and Joan Long, a 19-year-old from McMurray who also had polio, were among the honorees in a New York City Loyalty Day parade sponsored by the Veterans of Foreign Wars. They were sent to the parade as Salk's representatives, and also had tea with New York Gov. Averell Harriman and were the king and queen at an evening dance.

"While impressed with the honors heaped on them, the youngsters were equally wide-eyed at the festivities at the dance," according to Monongahela's Daily Herald. "It has been reliably reported that Jimmy developed a keen appreciation of the charm of Vera Allen, popular movie actress, and Joan capitulated to the personality of singer Eddie Fisher, entertainer at the dance."

The success of the vaccine may have lifted a burden from the shoulders of many families, but polio didn't entirely fade away in the region. The Daily Courier in Connellsville ran a wire story in its Jan. 29, 1957, edition about concerns that the rate of polio vaccinations among teenagers and young adults was lagging. Despite widespread inoculation of children, the report said that only 1 in 6 adults between the age of 20 and 35 had gotten the three-shot polio regimen. The same month, the newspaper carried a story on how Pennsylvania doctors were combating "public apathy" about the vaccine.

Two years later, a polio vaccine clinic happened in Uniontown in order to get more shots in more arms. The Evening Standard's July 15, 1959, edition said the clinic, which was at Uniontown Hospital's Annette Home for Nurses, was designed "to serve persons who, for one reason or another, have been unable to get their first polio shot."

Later that year, a vaccine clinic was set for Perry Township in Fayette County. Connellsville's Daily Courier put a story on the clinic next to a report that a city resident had been diagnosed with polio. It reported that Kenneth A. Steindl's right leg was paralyzed, "and paralysis is starting in the left leg."

"He reportedly had received no polio inoculations," the story noted.

Steindl died in October 1959, and because he died of an infectious disease, there were no viewings of his body at a funeral home. Pennsylvania's Department of Health also decreed that his funeral services were to be "strictly private."

Still, as time went on, fewer and fewer stories like Stendl's appeared in the pages of the Daily Courier and other newspapers. On April 14, 1965, 10 years after the introduction of the polio vaccine, the Daily Courier carried a small item about Salk and his contention that the "really tough battles against disease lie ahead."

Salk said, "The easy ones have been solved."

70 Years After The First Polio Vaccine Was Licensed, Philly-area Survivors Stress Importance Of Continued Vaccination

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Jim Smith was only 2 years old when he suddenly became paralyzed from the neck down. It was 1945, and his parents immediately knew what was wrong: polio.

The viral disease had terrorized people for decades. Most people who were exposed had very mild symptoms that mimicked a common cold or the flu. Some never had any signs of illness at all.

But in serious cases, children and adults became bedridden with muscle weakness and paralysis, or even had to be placed in iron lung machines to help them breathe. Some died from the disease. Many survivors would later develop post-polio syndrome, a condition that involves new muscle weakness and pain decades after the initial infection.

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It was a scary prospect, said Smith, now 82, as he sat in his wheelchair manning a table at a recent community health and disability fair in New Hope, Pa. Members of the Post Polio Network volunteer at a recent health and disability fair in New Hope, Pa. (Nicole Leonard/WHYY)

When he became paralyzed as a child, his parents rushed him from their home in Bristol to Philadelphia where all the hospitals were.

"And at that time, they were all full," Smith said, so they were sent away.

Left to figure out his care on their own, Smith's parents did everything they could, he said. They even engineered a sort of canvas stretcher that they used to lower his motionless body into steaming hot baths, multiple times a day, "to try to loosen the muscles."

They adopted a physical therapy technique known as the Sister Kenny method, pioneered by an Australian nurse to stimulate the affected muscles, all in the hopes that their son would survive and regain movement.

It took about five months for Smith to recover, but he was left with permanent muscle weakness and partial paralysis in one leg.

"And you limped, they called you names," said Carol Ferguson, a long-time friend and fellow polio survivor.

"Oh, yeah. 'Limpy' and some other ones," Smith said. "But you develop your own way of ignoring the comments and just keep moving along."

Vaccine release sparks hope among parents

A game changer arrived in the spring of 1955, and eager parents started lining up their kids to receive a dose of a new polio vaccine, a much-anticipated weapon against this devastating and feared disease.

This week marks 70 years since the first polio vaccine was licensed on April 12, 1955, which kicked off mass vaccination campaigns that eventually helped eradicate the illness in the U.S. And many other countries.

Today, Smith, Ferguson and other polio survivors like John Nanni, of Delaware, spend a lot of time educating others about polio disease, the long-term complications of post-polio syndrome and the importance of polio vaccination.

The work is especially relevant today as childhood vaccinations have come under attack, Nanni said.

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"Polio is not just an illness that you get over. It's something that affects you your whole life," he said. "For every child that we save from polio, we're saving them from a life of pain and suffering." John Nanni, 71, of Middletown, Delaware, volunteers with the Polio Network and the Rotary Club of Middletown-Odessa-Townsend to educate people about polio disease, post-polio syndrome and the importance of polio vaccination. (Nicole Leonard/WHYY)

Nanni had paralytic polio when he was 10 months old in 1953. At the time, people still weren't quite sure how the virus spread. He said families that were affected were treated like pariahs.

"We'd be walking down a street and people would literally cross the street to avoid coming in contact with us, because they didn't know how long somebody was contagious with polio," he said.

Nanni became ill just before clinical trial sites came to towns all across the country for a new polio vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk and his team at the University of Pittsburgh.

The polio vaccine being administered by Dr. Jonas Salk on April 23, 1964. (AP Photo)

In this Oct. 7, 1954, file photo, Dr. Jonas Salk, developer of the polio vaccine, holds a rack of test tubes in his lab in Pittsburgh. Tens of millions of today's older Americans lived through the polio epidemic, their childhood summers dominated by concern about the virus. Some parents banned their kids from public swimming pools and neighborhood playgrounds and avoided large gatherings. (AP Photo, File)

Elvis Presley receives a polio vaccine in New York City in 1956 in an effort to inspire public confidence in the vaccine. The Ad Council says it will be recruiting trusted influencers for its campaign around the coronavirus vaccine. (AP Photo)

FILE - This 2014 illustration made available by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention depicts a polio virus particle. The polio virus has been found in New York City's wastewater in another sign that the disease, which hadn't been seen in the U.S. In a decade, is quietly spreading among unvaccinated people, health officials said Friday, Aug. 12, 2022. (Sarah Poser, Meredith Boyter Newlove/CDC via AP, File)

Dr. Jonas Salk's polio vaccine is shown in April, 1955. (AP Photo)

Dr. Jonas Salk, the scientist who created the polio vaccine, administers an injection to an unidentified boy at Arsenal Elementary School in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1954. (AP)

Salk's work and legacy

The famous scientist's son Peter Salk, the oldest of three boys, remembered that the whole family was involved in the trials.

"One day, my father came home from the laboratory with the batch of the experimental vaccine, needles, syringes, sterilizing them on the stove and lining us up," he said.

After years of research and already millions of trial vaccinations in children, a breakthrough announcement was made on April 12, 1955.

"Basically, the vaccine was found to be safe and effective," Peter said. "Even as I'm saying it now, I'm getting gooseflesh, because what did this mean to the people in this country who had been so terrified for their children for such a long period of time, not taking them to the movies, swimming pools? The relief that was felt was just tangible."

Different kinds of polio vaccines followed Dr. Salk's original creation, including Dr. Albert Sabin's oral version containing weakened, live virus. By 1979, the U.S. Had seen its last case of locally-acquired wild poliovirus infection and declared the disease eradicated nationwide.

Polio remains endemic in just two countries today: Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Peter, who became a doctor and researcher himself and teaches as a part-time professor at the University of Pittsburgh, said it's important to keep talking about the polio epidemic and the role of vaccines in ending it.

"People don't have infectious disease on their minds so much because of vaccines that have protected their children starting very young," Peter said. "So it's easy to forget about, not think about, the importance of keeping ourselves in that situation where we are not being plagued by infectious diseases that can be prevented."

The long shadow of polio

Carol Ferguson carries that same message when she volunteers at community health events in Pennsylvania. She leads the Polio Network, an international nonprofit that provides information and resources about polio and post-polio syndrome.

"It's all part of what we try and do is keep this history alive, make it real, help people understand that this is real," she said. "But it's hard. It's really hard."

Ferguson had a brief, mild case of polio in 1954. But she didn't have any paralytic symptoms or serious effects, so doctors never made an official diagnosis.

Only decades later when she began tripping, falling, stumbling and having pain up and down her side did an expert finally make the connection between the virus and post-polio syndrome.

It's a diagnosis that Ferguson, now 73, hopes many others are spared from, hopefully, she said, because they're vaccinated.

"Polio is not one and done. And many of these viruses are not," she said. "The long-term effects, it breaks my heart. And for us, one child getting this is painful."

Nanni, now 71, was also diagnosed with post-polio syndrome about 20 years ago. He uses a wheelchair and does water therapy in efforts to preserve as much muscle strength as possible.

He volunteers much of his time with his local Rotary Club, an international service network that has pledged to end polio disease.

"You know, I have a saying, 'Vaccines cause adults,'" Nanni said and smiled. "The key is vaccinations."

Newer versions of Dr. Jonas Salk's inactivated polio vaccine is still used today in the U.S. And abroad. Scientists and public health experts hope that polio will one day be eradicated from the world.

Members of the Post Polio Network distribute cards at a health and disability fair in New Hope, Pa., that include information on how anesthesia can affect people who once had polio infection. (Nicole Leonard/WHYY)

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