On This Day
Polio Vaccine
Polio Vaccine
American medical researcher, Dr. Jonas Salk, announced on March 26, 1953, that he has a vaccine to fight the crippling disease of polio.
In 1952 there were 58,000 new cases and more than 3,000 deaths reported in the United States. In 1957, the first year the vaccine was widely available, there were under 6,000 cases reported. Today thanks to the vaccine, there are every few polio cases and most of those are imported by Americans who visited developing nations where polio is still a problem.
Patients are treated in the 1950's in the "Iron Lung" which aided respiration.
Photo courtesy of The March of Dimes