Some evidence suggests that polio has existed for thousands of years. Ancient scriptures and drawings found in Egypt indicate that people suffered even then, but there was no cure or prevention.
If we pause that and come back to civilization in 1789, Britain. Dr. Micheal Underwood became the first person to call the disease “Debility of the Lower Extremities.” However, there wasn’t any cure even then.
In 1840, another scientist, Dr. Jacob Von Heine, studied polio in Germany and theorized that it may be contagious. Before getting better, polio took a turn for the worse. In 1894, infantile paralysis surged and affected thousands of children, marking it the first US polio paralysis outbreak, causing massive hysteria.
Discovery of the Virus
It wasn’t until 1907 when Dr. Ivar Wickman researched the polio virus and ordered the different clinical types of polio. A year after that, two Austrian Scientists further explored the diseases and what caused them, leading them to believe and hypothesize that a virus causes polio disease.
With no cure for the deadly virus, the situation has worsened to the point of being fatal. In 1916, the world saw the worst of things. A polio epidemic in New York, USA, deepens apprehension on all sides of the world and expedites the research for a cure or prevention.
Vaccination At Last
After years of research, Dr. Jonas Salk in 1955 developed the first injectable vaccine against polio, bringing hope to the people. Triumph against the war with polio was won when Dr. Albert Sabin developed an oral (live) vaccine against polio that has since then saved millions upon millions of children worldwide.
This vaccine became the immunization method internationally after this phenomenal breakthrough.
The World is Polio-Free, Who’s Not?
In 1974, the World Health Assembly adopted a resolution to establish the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) to deliver vaccines to children worldwide. Due to these efforts by governmental and private institutions, WHO registered the last wild polio case in the American region in 1991.
In 1994, WHO declared America as certified polio-free. By the year 2014, WHO declared most of the world’s countries as Polio-free except for two.
Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The fight against Polio is still an ongoing battle in the two countries. The world is polio-free, but Pakistan still faces 65 cases in 2024.
Let’s join hands in eradicating polio from the world, Rava is joining it’s forces with the industry in hopes of minimizing and ending this disease from the world once and for all.