Year 9 child studies poster

Polio (poliomyelitis)
Polio, or poliomyelitis, is a disabling and life-threatening disease caused by the poliovirus. The virus spreads from person to person and
can infect a person's spinal cord, causing paralysis which means you can't move some parts of your body.
Polio has no treatment, but good physiotherapy may help with recovery. The small number of people who get paralysis need to go to
hospital and may need intensive care.
There's no cure for polio, but a vaccine allows your body to fight off the virus. Before the vaccine became available in the 1950s, the
virus paralysed thousands of people each year. By the 1970s, because many people had the vaccine, there were fewer than 10 cases of
polio in the U.S.
Australia has been officially polio-free since 2000. Polio is present in only a few countries in the world. In Australia there were major
polio epidemics in the late 1930s, early 1940s and 1950s.
The last epidemic was in 1956. Polio vaccines were introduced in Australia in 1956 (Salk) and 1966 (Sabin) and were followed by mass
immunisation programs.
Polio is spread when the stool of an infected person is introduced into the mouth of another person
through contaminated water or food, fecal-oral transmission.