Polio Revisited part 1

Polio had the power to paralyze a president and mobilize an entire nation toward an unprecedented public health response. To most Americans the disease was eradicated once Jonas Salk’s vaccine became available but the threat of Polio has not really gone away. Now decades later, some Polio victims who thought they had recovered are finding that their old symptoms are returning decades later in the form of Post Polio Syndrome. To make matters worse, isolated cases of Polio are popping up again in both American children who have failed to be immunized and by American tourists who have contracted Polio during their travels. An estimated one million youngsters are not vaccinated and vulnerable to an opportunistic infection. Part 1 Polio survivors share their accounts of what it was like to live through the polio epidemic as children. Historian Dr. Daniel Wilson, author of the book “Polio Voices” leads us through a brief history of polio and its first U.S. outbreaks. An animation shows how the polio virus infects the human body.