Chicagoland

Once common, polio now eradicated in Western Hemisphere

By Michelle Martin | Staffwriter
Thursday, April 23, 2015

Poliomyelitis, or polio, is a crippling and potentially deadly infectious disease caused by a virus that spreads from person to person invading the brain and spinal cord and causing paralysis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Cardinal George contracted the disease when he was 13, and it changed the course of his life. He was unable to attend Quigley Preparatory Seminary in Chicago as he wished, instead enrolling at St. Henry Preparatory Seminary in Belleville, Illinois, and eventually joining the Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

Because polio has no cure, vaccination is the best form of protection for individuals and the only way to stop the disease from spreading. The spread of polio has never stopped in Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan, and it has been reintroduced and continues to spread in Chad and the Horn of Africa.

In the late 1940s to the early 1950s, in the United States alone, polio crippled around 35,000 people each year making it one of the most feared diseases of the 20th century.

“Sometimes you ended up in an iron lung, sometimes you ended up wearing braces on your legs for the rest of your life,” Father Lawrence Malcolm explained on April 20 to children at St. Gerald School who are part of a generation that has never had to fear the disease. They gathered for a special Mass to mourn the passing of Cardinal George.

By 1979 the United States became polio-free thanks to the vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk and introduced in 1955. The eradication of polio from the Western hemisphere is among the most significant public health achievements of all time, according to the CDC.

People who have had polio often have after-effects that last their entire lives. Cardinal George used a leg brace and walked with a limp after he recovered. He also needed support to keep his balance walking downstairs, Malcolm said, something that emphasized that everyone needs help from time to time.

Cardinal George wrote in a Catholic New World column in August 2012 that he went to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, every five years so doctors could follow the after-effects of the polio.

“As one of the doctors of the clinic told me when I was 35 years old and chair of the board of an Oblate-sponsored nursing home in Rochester, Minnesota: ‘You have a stressful job, and you’re the first generation of polio patients who will grow old with the disease. You’re also the last, because of the effectiveness of the Salk vaccine. We’ll follow you until you get the disease that will kill you.’”

Topics:

  • cardinal george
  • polio

Related Articles

Advertising