Many people today wouldn’t recognize what this is
and that’s an amazing thing because
it shows how much progress we’ve made against polio.
It’s a terrible disease
and in most countries now, largely forgotten.
The paralysis from polio starts with your legs
and then can get up into this diaphragm area.
A lot of people died simply because they can’t breathe
and that’s where this comes in to help out.
This is called an iron lung.
It’s a mechanical respirator.
There’s a pump down here
that creates enough air pressure
that even though your diaphragm is paralyzed,
it allows you to keep breathing.
Your head’s sticking out here.
It’s pretty grim
but it used to keep thousands of people alive.
The height of the polio epidemic in the United States
was in the 1940s and ‘50s.
This used to be something
that you could see rows and rows of in lots of hospitals,
kids lying in here,
and then that pump actually allowing them to breathe.
The reason we don’t have kids needing these anymore
is because of the polio vaccine.
We’ve reduced the number of cases by 99.9 percent.
And now, wild polio is only in two countries:
Afghanistan and Pakistan.
During this pandemic, the world benefited
from the precious resource of the polio program
where all that personnel shifted their focus
to help contain the spread of COVID-19.
As much as we’ve achieved in the polio fight,
I can’t think of a more important time
for us to double down and finish the job.
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative has a great plan
that will do more than just eradicate polio.
They’ll also raise vaccination rates
and improve health very dramatically.
This iron lung was a great tool,
but now we need the iron will
of everybody involved in this fight.
And it’s thanks to the commitment of Rotary
and many other partners,
that makes me confident
we can create a world
where no child will ever be paralyzed by polio again.