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Poliomyelitis (/ ˌ p oʊ l i oʊ ˌ m aɪ ə ˈ l aɪ t ɪ s / POH-lee-oh-MY-ə-LY-tiss), commonly shortened to polio, is an infectious disease caused by the poliovirus. [1] Approximately 75% of cases are asymptomatic; [5] mild symptoms which can occur include sore throat and fever; in a proportion of cases more severe symptoms develop such as headache, neck stiffness, and paresthesia.
The history of polio (poliomyelitis) infections began during prehistory. Although major polio epidemics were unknown before the 20th century, [1] the disease has caused paralysis and death for much of human history. Over millennia, polio survived quietly as an endemic pathogen until the 1900s when major epidemics began to occur in Europe. [1]
There are two kinds of polio vaccine—oral polio vaccine (OPV), which uses weakened poliovirus, and inactivated polio vaccine (IPV), which is injected. OPV is less expensive and easier to administer, and can spread immunity beyond the person vaccinated, creating contact immunity. It has been the predominant vaccine used.
Polio: An American Story by David M. Oshinsky, professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin, documents the polio epidemic in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s and the race to develop a vaccine, which led to 2 different types of polio vaccine: inactivated poliovirus vaccine, developed by a team led by Jonas Salk, and oral poliovirus vaccine, developed by a team led by ...
A child receives oral polio vaccine during a 2002 campaign to immunize children in India. Poliovirus. Polio eradication, the goal of permanent global cessation of circulation of the poliovirus and hence elimination of the poliomyelitis (polio) it causes, is the aim of a multinational public health effort begun in 1988, led by the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Children's ...
As with all medications, vaccines are continually monitored for safety, and like any medication, vaccines can cause side effects. The side effects of vaccination are typically minor and go away within a few days. There is a risk that the child could have a severe allergic reaction, but these reactions are rare.
Albert Sabin, a virologist who publicly disagreed with Salk and his killed vaccine, worked on creating a vaccine with live attenuated vaccines. [5] In January 1956, despite Cold War tensions, Mikhail Chumakov, the director of Moscow's Polio Research Institute, along with his wife virologist Marina Voroshilova, and his colleague Anatoli Smorodentsev, traveled to the U.S. in order to study the ...
A few years later, during a polio outbreak in Canada, "masked bandits" stole 75,000 Salk vaccine shots from a Montreal university research center. [25] Just months after the vaccine's success was announced, American President Eisenhower signed the Polio Vaccination Assistance Act of 1955, to ensure the vaccine would be distributed to the public ...