The president of the United States Franklin Delano Roosevelt he was the most recognized victim in the world to have suffered from poliomyelitis (polio) and, in fact, founded the organization that sponsored the development of the vaccine. This came in 1955, under the research of Jonas Salk, New York microbiologist of Jewish and Russian origin.
Would in 1947 when the National Foundation andAmerican Program for Infantile Paralysis promoted, together with Salk, the way to stop polio. The illness it advanced relentlessly, leaving behind thousands of deaths and pain. During the following eight years, this researcher worked tirelessly, until he finally announced the creation of the vaccine prototype.
Jonas Salk led the first team to develop a polio vaccine. The use of inactivated poliovirus and the subsequent widespread use of oral poliomyelitis, achieved by Albert Sabinled to the creation of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) in 1988. Since then, the GPEI has reduced polio worldwide by 99%.
In United States, the 1952 polio outbreak fIt was the worst in the nation’s history. Of the almost 58,000 cases, 3,145 died and 21,269 were paralyzed, with most of the victims being children.
Jonas Salk, the creator of the first polio vaccine
The president who promoted the vaccine
In the year 1921, Franklin D. Roosevelt realized when he was swimming in a pool that he could not move his left leg well. After suffering from fever and pain in his extremities, Roosevelt was diagnosed with polio disease. The later president of the United States had lost all feeling from the waist down and never got out of a wheelchair, even though he never allowed himself to be photographed in it.
After consulting with local doctors, his family decided to call a professor at the University of Harvard, Robert Lovett, author of the book Treatment of infantile paralysis. Lovett diagnosed him with polio and told him that while it wasn’t one of the most severe cases, there was no way to be sure he’d be able to walk again. Throughout these years, it has been ensured that the disease of Roosevelt It was decisive for the change in attitude of the US government and Americans with respect to public health.
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