Disease

This photograph of a computer screen during a virtual interview on April 9, 2021, shows Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, right, as he sits with his wife Fran DeWine while she holds a printed copy of the Yellow Springs News issue page from April 28, 1955 that shows DeWine as a then second-grader, while receiving his polio vaccination. Tens of millions of today’s older Americans lived through the polio epidemic, their childhood summers dominated by concern about the virus. Some parents banned their kids from public swimming pools and neighborhood playgrounds and avoided large gatherings. Some of those from the polio era are sharing their memories with today’s youngsters as a lesson of hope for the battle against COVID-19. Soon after polio vaccines became widely available, U.S. cases and death tolls plummeted to hundreds a year, then dozens in the 1960s, and to U.S. eradication in 1979.(AP Photo/Dan Sewell)

Polio: When vaccines and re-emergence were just as daunting

Survivors sharing their memories with today’s younger people as a lesson of hope

Young girls are shown in the Polio girls’ ward at Sick Kids Hospital in a 1937 handout photo in Toronto. The mystery illness that paralyzed and killed mostly children across Canada came in waves that built for nearly four decades before a vaccine introduced in 1955 put an end to the suffering. That was too late for 14-year-old Miki Boleen who contracted polio for a second time in 1953, perplexing doctors who believed “the crippler” could not strike the same patient twice. Boleen, now 80, is hoping for a vaccine for COVID-19 as she reflects on the fear that spread with outbreaks of polio. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO, Sick Kids Hospital *MANDATORY CREDIT*

Survivors who missed out on polio vaccine hope for breakthrough against COVID-19

An estimated 11,000 people in Canada were left paralyzed by polio between 1949 and 1954