When the project becomes overwhelming, however, the disease hunters can look at what has been accomplished. About 2.5 million children today are able to walk because they never caught the paralytic disease, Aylward said. And about 270,000 people are alive because polio didn't kill them. Existing success aside, the logistics of erasing polio become more difficult as the number of cases shrinks. The countries with polio have less money, so others must come up with the cash to pay for the vaccine.
Surveillance becomes more important, so health officials can prove polio is gone.
The world must be polio-free at least three years before the disease is declared eradicated. And then there's battle fatigue. About half of the estimated 1 million U.S. polio survivors report new weakness, fatigue and pain, intolerance of heat or cold, trouble breathing and sleep disturbances. Although doctors don't understand the cause, many attribute the syndrome to overuse of muscles that compensated for those damaged and atrophied by the polio virus. Symptoms are most common in the lower extremities, but they can occur anywhere.