This is August. It’s hot! Do you remember – a couple generations ago – when this was the “scary season”?
What were we “scared” about?
Parents feared the disease called poliomyelitis, polio for short, that earlier was called “infantile paralysis.” But it sometimes struck adults, too.
August and September were particularly frightening months because that’s when most polio cases seemed to occur. Polio sometimes caused deaths. “Iron lungs” were devised to help patients breathe. But more often, the disease was manifested among children by paralysis or limited development of legs and arms.
In Chattanooga, and many other cities, fall school openings often were delayed for two or three weeks in an attempt to minimize exposure of children until, it was hoped, the worst danger of the “polio season” was over.
Remember President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s and 1940s? In his early years, he had suffered polio. In his political life, he generally attempted to disguise his lingering disability. But later, he publicized polio by sponsoring nationwide “Presidential Birthday Balls” to generate funds to fight polio.
Like many other cities, Chattanooga had a big public dance at Memorial Auditorium each year to fight polio.
Then came two “medical miracles.” There were separate developments by Dr. Jonas Salk and Dr. Albert Sabin in the 1950s of vaccines that could immunize children, and adults, to prevent polio! There were annual community campaigns for immunization. They worked!
Success in preventing polio has spread throughout the world, to the extent that we don’t think of “the scary season” much anymore. But unfortunately, polio still exists – with terrible pockets of the disease often occurring in Africa and Asia. So through worldwide health organizations, the fight against polio goes on.
We need to continue polio immunization in our country to be sure the disease does not come back as a serious problem.
Rotary International took a lead years ago in promoting worldwide programs for immunization. At Chattanooga’s Rotary Club on Thursday, there was a program with Dr. Stephen L. Cochi, senior adviser to the director of the Global Immunization Division of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as the featured speaker.
Rotary is continuing locally to be a part of a $200 million international 2008-2012 effort against polio worldwide, to be sure, through continued immunization, that the disease does not rise again.
What a wonderful thing it is when any disease that once caused many deaths, disabilities – and much fear – can be brought under widespread control, be eliminated in many places, and be minimized in others.