Older Americans remember when, in the 1940s and 50’s, polio crippled about 35,000 people each year. After Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine, the devastating disease, which is caused by a virus and usually spreads via infected food or water, was eradicated in the US. In fact, over the last half century, polio has been eliminated in a majority of the world.
But in 1988, a collaboration of organizations — UNICEF, Rotary International, The U.S. Centers for Disease Control, and the World Health Organization (WHO) — formed the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, to promote vaccinations that will, once and for all, eradicate polio from the Earth.
They thought India would be the greatest challenge because historically it was the largest reservoir of the disease with up to 100,000 paralytic polio cases occurring each year between 1978 and 1995. It has also been one of the main sources of polio importation for other countries.
But today leaders of the monumental effort formally announced the end of polio in India. Further, they proclaimed the entire Southeast Asian region, home to a quarter of the world’s population, to be entirely polio-free.
Because of his nasty demeanor on the streets of a South Carolina town, homeless man Ben Richardson, known as Rock Man, didn’t have any friends— and maybe didn’t want any friends.
