Polio. It’s Happened Again, Right Here in the US.

The July, 2022 announcement that a 20 year-old man from Rockland County, NY was paralyzed by the poliovirus brings back memories of the fear, disability and death that came each summer with the polio epidemics. How can polio be happening here? We have had an injectable polio vaccine (IPV) that is 99% effective available to all children in the US since 2000. But vaccines can’t do their job if people don’t take them, and the young man from New York was not vaccinated. That’s why polio is happening again.                                                      

Reports indicated that his paralysis was caused by a mutation of the oral Type 2 poliovirus vaccine (OPV), a mutation that occasionally changes the vaccine to cause paralysis. The oral polio vaccines have not been given in the US since 2000, suggesting that the chain of transmission of this contagious disease began abroad. The CDC and WHO have reported the virus that infected the New York man is genetically related to the vaccine-derived poliovirus recently found in the sewage in New York, London, Israel and Canada. Like the US, these are countries that saw the eradication of polio in the 1980’s. The paralyzed man must have come in close contact with someone who had received the mutated oral Type 2 polio vaccine outside the US.

As polio survivors, this case in NY is horribly sad and deeply personal. Sad because the injectable polio vaccine - the only vaccine given in the US - is 99% effective in its protection against all three types of poliovirus. If only he had been vaccinated, the paralyzed young man never would have become ill at all. Even sadder is that he will have to live with a disability and chances are high that he will become even more disabled as a result of Post-Polio Syndrome (PPS) as he ages.  

Why is one case of polio deeply personal? Because lack of vaccination has added one more preventable case of polio paralysis to the WHO estimated 20+ million polio survivors, the vast majority of whom will develop PPS - the late effects of polio.  

Survivors of this disease will always remember:

•       Those who died. 

•       The terror that came with being so sick. 

•       Lonely months and years of hospitalization, surgeries and painful rehabilitation, all while separated

from parents and siblings. 

•       The frightening reality of the iron lung. 

•       The sorrow that came with discovering wheelchairs, leg braces and crutches were ours for life.

•       The loneliness that came as we returned home and forced to accept that everyone around us knew

that it was the home of a “polio cripple”, and parents kept their children away. 

•       The shock that has come with the reality of the long-haul effects of polio (PPS), when those of us

who thought we escaped or recovered from paralysis find ourselves with new weakness, fatigue and

pain as we age.

There are many first-person polio survivor stories on our website describing the realities of this terrible disease. 

Yes, the story of this young man’s suffering is sad and deeply personal. Even one unvaccinated person with polio is one too many. His pain is completely unnecessary. The miracle of the polio vaccines came too late for the millions of others who are living with the life long, physical disabilities that come with this terrible disease. But, the poliovirus is tricky. It doesn't always cause paralysis. One lesson learned during the polio epidemics is that there are hundreds of asymptomatic poliovirus infections for each paralytic case, meaning that many of those infected with polio were so mildly affected that they didn’t even know they'd had the virus. Just because someone had no symptoms or minor flu-like symptoms, showing no obvious weakness or paralysis, doesn’t mean that the poliovirus didn’t do damage to neurons in the brain and spinal cord. 

We celebrate Rotary International’s focus on disease prevention and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative for their determined efforts to rid the world of polio and educate parents about the gift of modern vaccines. 

Polio hasn't been eradicated yet. The foreign origin of the poliovirus that paralyzed the unvaccinated man in New York is a painful reminder that polio (and many vaccine preventable diseases) are only a plane ride away.

If Polio Exists Anywhere, it is a threat to children everywhere.

                 Richard L. Bruno, HD, PhD  and Carol Ferguson, Founder, PA Polio Survivors Network