Polio is a dinosaur of a disease, with suspected cases dating back to prehistoric Egypt. For a portion of the 20th century, the paralysis it sometimes caused represented one of the greatest public health threats to American life. Today, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who’s had polio — the last time a case originated in the United States was 1979.
For this, you can thank one of America’s longest-running vaccine campaigns. In the 70 years we’ve been vaccinating against polio (also known as poliomyelitis), cases worldwide have been reduced by more than 99.9%. There’s a real possibility that polio could be eradicated entirely within our lifetime. Of the three viruses that cause polio (known simply as Types 1-3), only Type 1 remains. Types 2 and 3 were declared eradicated in September 2015 and October 2019, respectively.
When the polio vaccine was first made available in the U.S. in 1955, the country had never undertaken a nationwide vaccine campaign before. That we even have a standardized vaccine schedule for children today is the direct result of both that campaign and the smaller (or, smallpox-er) ones that came before it.
Read more at Fatherly.