Polio: an Old Threat that the World Cannot Give Up

Felix Victorino

Factuality

Ownership

Every 24 October the world commemorates World Polio Day, in honor of the birth of Dr. Jonas Salk, creator of the first inactivated vaccine that changed the course of one of the most feared diseases of the 20th century. The date is not only a tribute to science, but a reminder that viruses, even those that seem defeated, always find ways to return when surveillance declines. For much of the last century, polio—also known as “child paralysis”—beca…