Polio, a highly contagious viral infection that can cause paralysis and death, has been eradicated in Canada for decades thanks to widespread vaccination efforts.
There is no cure for polio; it can only be prevented, and doctors warn if vaccine rates continue to decline as they have in recent years, it could open the door to a return of the virus in Canada.
“It’s ridiculous,” said Pat Murray, a polio survivor who contracted the disease at just nine months old.
“It’s heartbreaking.”
Murray was diagnosed in Winnipeg in 1953, at the height of the polio epidemic.
She was told her neighbour’s daughter shared her lollipop with her and her sister. Both got very sick with the virus.
“My dad told me that when I was in bed, I could only move my head from side to side — the rest of my body was limp,” Murray said.
While many people infected with the virus experience mild or no symptoms, others develop more serious complications, including permanent disability. In severe cases, polio can lead to paralysis, muscle weakness, and in some cases, death.
Murray now lives with post-polio syndrome.
Post-polio syndrome (PPS) is a condition that can affect people several decades after an initial infection, anywhere from 10 to 40 years later, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
The academic medical centre says approximately 30 to 40 per cent of people who’ve had polio will develop PPS. It causes gradual muscle weakness and atrophy.
There’s no cure, so treatment focuses on managing symptoms.
“As time goes by, you lose more and more,” Murray said.
“Your muscles get weaker and weaker.”
Murray is a member of the Wildrose Polio Support Society. Its members all live with the PPS impacts of the virus, decades later.
Bernie Hornung, who contracted polio as a toddler, spent his childhood wearing a brace on his right leg.
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“I just grew up with it. That was me,” he told Global News, recalling the moment doctors fused his ankle so he no longer needed support.
“I didn’t have a sweet 16 party. I had a brace-burning party.”
For Ferne Hymanyk, polio struck when she was nine. She remembers being sent from her family’s rural Alberta farm to the Edmonton General Hospital.
“I had never been away from home, so it was a very traumatic time,” she said. “There was a ward that was all polios. Both legs are affected, my one shoulder was affected, my spine is affected.”
The group all gathered to share their stories with Global News because of their concerns about the possibility of seeing the virus return to Canada.
“(It would be) horrifying,” Hymanyk said. “It would be very upsetting.”
They hope that by sharing what they have been through for decades, others will take the warnings about declining vaccine rates seriously.
“It just does not make any sense to me that people would rather believe misinformation and disinformation than the good, solid, hard science that means that your kids can grow up and lead a normal life,” Murray said.
Throughout the early 20th century, polio outbreaks began to happen more regularly, especially in summer months, with cities seeing large numbers of cases, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Before the first polio vaccine was developed in 1955, the disease — spread mostly from person to person, through contaminated water and via fecal particles — was among the world’s most feared, paralyzing hundreds of thousands of children annually.
Little was known about how the disease spread, leading to closed pools in summer and empty playgrounds as parents tried to protect their children from falling ill.
People avoided crowded places during epidemics, and hospital wards filled with children encased in iron lungs after the virus immobilized their breathing muscles.
The World Health Organization and partners embarked on a polio vaccination campaign in 1988 with the bold goal of eradication — a feat seen only once before for human diseases, with smallpox in 1980.
They came close several times, including in 2021, when just five cases of the natural virus were reported in Pakistan and Afghanistan. But since then, cases have rebounded.
Afghanistan and Pakistan remain the only countries where transmission of polio — which is highly infectious, affects mainly children under five and can cause irreversible paralysis within hours — has never been interrupted. A worldwide campaign has focused most of its attention and funding there for the past decade.
Polio was eradicated in Canada in 1994, but dropping rates of vaccination have caused doctors to speculate it could return.
According to Statistics Canada, around 91 per cent of Canadian children have received the recommended polio vaccine doses by their second birthday, below the 95 per cent needed for strong herd protection. That national number has remained relatively unchanged for over a decade, according to Statistics Canada data.
However in Alberta, Statistics Canada said the estimated polio vaccine coverage by two years of age (meaning the child had received three doses) dropped in the past decade: about 85 per cent in 2021 compared to 93 per cent in 2017.
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Polio is eradicated in Canada. Will vaccine skepticism usher in a return?
Polio is part of the routine vaccine schedule in Canada and is given to infants as part of a combination vaccine. It’s called DTaP-IPV-Hib-HB and protects against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough), polio, Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) and hepatitis B.
The vaccine is typically administered in multiple doses during the first few years of life to ensure long-lasting protection against the disease.
According to the CDC, the polio vaccine protects against severe disease caused by poliovirus in almost everyone who has received all the recommended doses.
Two doses of IPV provide at least 90 per cent protection. Three doses of IPV provide at least 99 per cent protection. The most common side effect is a sore arm after the shot.
The WHO says as long as a single child remains infected, kids everywhere are at risk. Eradication demands near-perfection – zero polio cases and immunizing more than 95 per cent of children.
For survivors, the discovery of the vaccine was life-changing. Murray remembers asking her mother if her children would face the same fate.
“She said, ‘No, your kids will be fine,’” Murray recalled.
“If no other kids have to suffer, it made me very happy.”
— with files from Katie Dangerfield and Karen Bartko, Global News and The Associated Press
