Why Polio, Once Nearly Eradicated, Is Rebounding: QuickTake

Poliomyelitis (“polio” for short) has been a cause of life-threatening paralysis for thousands of years. At the height of the biggest-ever outbreak in 1952, almost 60,000 cases with more than 3,000 deaths were reported in the US alone. Thanks to immunizations and access to clean water, wards filled with children kept alive in iron lungs are a distant memory. For years, polio has teetered close to global eradication. Now a combination of old and new challenges -- including conflict, vaccine hesitancy and the Covid-19 pandemic -- are frustrating a decades-long effort to stop its international spread. A case in an ...