Word: polio
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...witnessed that same dogged approach to public health many years before, when he and I worked together in the early 1990s on eliminating polio in the Western Pacific?a daunting task made harder by a lack of funds and by long days without sleep...
Almost 70 years ago, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Class of 1904, and a former Crimson editor, became alarmed by the worsening polio epidemics that were killing or paralyzing thousands of children and adults in the U.S. each year. The nation was deep into the Depression. Money was desperately needed to provide care for polio patients as well as to support research to find a vaccine against the dreaded disease. Roosevelt knew first-hand the devastation caused by polio—he himself was affected by it in 1921, and never walked unaided again...
...authorized a radio appeal urging every American to send a dime directly to the President to help beat polio. The first days of this “March of Dimes” campaign produced a disappointing $17.50. However, a few days later, mail trucks started arriving at the White House. First there were 30,000 letters, then 50,000, and 150,000 the next day. Desks, offices, and corridors were buried in mail sacks. A total of 2,680,000 dimes had been sent. With this outpouring of generosity from ordinary Americans, Roosevelt established the nonprofit health agency known today...
...March of Dimes supported the development of both the Salk and Sabin polio vaccines that eradicated polio in the U.S. Then the organization reinvented itself with a new mission. Today, it works to improve the health of babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth, and other causes of infant death and disability...
...leading cause of death in newborns, and babies who survive often face lifelong challenges of cerebral palsy, mental retardation, chronic lung disease, vision and hearing loss, as well as other developmental problems. Just as the March of Dimes once focused the nation’s attention on polio and conquered it, today it addresses the increasing rate of prematurity by raising public awareness and funding more research to identify the causes of premature birth...