2 hours ago
3
Primarily affecting children, polio wrecked havoc in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, killing and maiming scores of children.
According to the World Health Organization, one in 200 polio infections leads to irreversible paralysis. Among those paralysed, 5-10% die when their breathing muscles become immobilised.
A vaccine for polio became available beginning in 1955. In the US, where Lillard was born, polio was declared eliminated in 1979, meaning it no longer routinely spread among the population.
That was thanks a US-wide vaccination campaign.
But today, vaccine hesitancy in the US is growing and health officials in the Trump administration are suggesting more vaccines become optional.
Kirk Milhoan, the chair of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suggested earlier this year that polio vaccines should be optional.
"As you look at polio, we need to not be afraid to consider that we are in a different time now than we were then," Milhoan said. "Our sanitation is different, our risk of disease is different, and so those all play into the evaluation of whether this is worthwhile of taking a risk for a vaccine or not."
That type of rhetoric worries McVey.
"Polio is terrible" she said through tears. "The disease disfigures, disables and leaves people trapped. We had it under control here and now we have all these people who aren't vaccinating their children."
McVey worries that memories of polio are too far removed to remember how serious it can be.
"They may think there's problems with the vaccine, but there's a whole lot more problems if they don't vaccinate," she said.
Lillard got polio the year before the vaccine came out.
"I had a friend who got to test that vaccine the year Martha got polio," she said.
"It was that close."
