“Worth Repeating” is a weekly feature on the EngAGE Blog that will bring you previous posts that we think are still timely, interesting, or just plain fun! From 4/23/15:
This month we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the vaccine developed by Jonas Salk that protected children from polio. Many of us remember the days when the disease terrorized families everywhere. In the NPR link below, the photo of rows of iron lungs in a polio ward is disturbing evidence of the effects it had. From NPR:
Tens of thousands of Americans — in the first half of the 20th century — were stricken by poliomyelitis. Polio, as it’s known, is a disease that attacks the central nervous system and often leaves its victims partially or fully paralyzed.
The hallmarks of the Polio Era were children on crutches and in iron lungs, shuttered swimming pools, theaters warning moviegoers to not sit too close to one another.
. . . The introduction of [the Salk] vaccine in 1955 was one of the biggest medical advances in American history.
Learn more here at NPR, and click here to learn about the resurgence in polio vaccine use in the developing world.
