Today, in many countries, polio can seem to be a disease to which little attention is paid. This is especially true among younger generations, who might view it as a thing of the past. But if you ask their grandparents, or people aged 70 years or older, they may well have relatives and acquaintances who suffered from polio, or may have contracted the disease themselves. This is because it was very common around the world until the second half of the 20th century. It is thanks to vaccination that polio is only found in endemic form in a handful of countries today. That said, isolated cases have appeared a little more widely in recent years.
In Sweden, no domestic case has been registered since 1977. Europe was declared polio-free in 2002, a status South and North America achieved in 1994. However, since September 2024, authorities in five European countries have detected poliovirus in wastewater. As a consequence, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) is now calling for measures to be taken. Until polio is eradicated, all children worldwide will need to be vaccinated. But, just as the future of this disease is once again in the spotlight, so too questions are being asked about its past.
A dangerous disease
Polio is an infection, a viral disease that is mainly spread via contaminated water, although it can also be passed on by close contact between people. Three subtypes of the poliovirus are known to have existed. While Type 2 and Type 3 have been eradicated following extensive vaccination programmes, Type 1 is still present.
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