WHO aims to eradicate polio, mark 50th anniversary of vaccine

Fifty years after the introduction of a vaccine for polio, World Health Organization officials say they're on track to beat the virus by the end of 2005.

Polio preyed on thousands of young Canadians, causing paralysis, deformed limbs and, in the most severe cases, death by asphyxiation.

• CBC ARCHIVES: Polio

In 1955, Dr. Jonas Salk announced the successful results of the first major field trial of the polio vaccine.

Africa has posed a challenge to efforts to eradicate the virus. The governments of Nigeria and Niger suspended their vaccination programs in 2003 because of distrust of the vaccine.

"The concern has always been that the vaccine may cause different situations like sterility, it might be contaminated, so on and so forth," said Dr. Luis Barretto, a spokesman for vaccine maker Sanofi-Aventis in Toronto. "But these are educational issues that always, always do happen."

• FROM OCT. 8, 2004: Major polio vaccination blitz launched in Africa

As a result of the setback to WHO's vaccination campaign, polio spread further in countries where it was already widespread, and was reintroduced to 12 countries in West and Central Africa that had been declared free of the disease.

In 2004, 1,258 children were paralysed with polio, up from 784 the previous year.

Public health officials eventually overcame the distrust and the vaccination programs resumed.

Halifax resident Marlene LeJune, a polio survivor and missionary nurse, said she was moved to see children infected with the virus in Mexico, although a vaccine was available.

"Very, very sad," LeJune recalled. "I think of the little children walking on sticks in Mexico with polio deformities."

When the last case of polio is detected by WHO, polio will officially join the list of two other viruses that have been eradicated by humans: smallpox and SARS.

"Public health is all about being at the right place at the right time," said Dr. David Heymann of WHO's Polio Eradication Initiative. "I've been fortunate because I was at the right place at the right time for smallpox, SARS and now for polio."

Once polio is gone, Heymann said his next target will be measles. The preventable disease kills 750,000 children worldwide every year.