Originally published October 17 2005
Threat of polio has been reduced but still remains
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Nigeria, India, Niger, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Egypt are all still at risk of polio outbreaks, but the Global Polio Eradication Initiative promises to continue its efforts to wipe out the disease.
It's been 50 years since a vaccine was invented to beat polio.
But Charles Buck of Hallowell remembers being diagnosed with the disease like it was yesterday.
Poliomyelitis, or polio, is a viral illness that produces no symptoms at all in approximately 95 percent of cases.
Buck was diagnosed during his first week of school in September 1955, the year of the last big polio epidemic in the country.
It was during the next spring that Jonas Salk's vaccine became widely available, all but eradicating the disease.
"I had the nonparalytic type of polio, so nothing showed and I was able to continue on and carried on a basically normal life," said Buck, who drives a school bus for School Administrative District 16.
"But when it comes to postpolio syndrome, now I get fatigued more easily and I was also diagnosed with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, making my symptoms more visible than my sister's," he said.
Both Stambach and Buck spent time at Hyde Memorial Home in Bath, where many children stayed during the height of Maine's polio epidemic in 1949.
For a long time, she walked with leg braces and crutches -- adaptive items that would become a crushing symbol of the disease's effects -- then started using a wheelchair when she had children.
Those who suffer from the syndrome sometimes face severe fatigue and muscle and bone pain.
They also have to deal with doctors who do not know much about polio or postpolio syndrome, since it was officially eradicated from the United States in 1979.
For those in medical school now, polio is often seen as just another mark in medical history.
"I hear a lot from patients about how they can deal with fatigue, but I see a lot of folks for bracing," Delmar said.
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