Polio: A Global Report

When 1,500 of the world's leading experts gathered in Geneva last week for the fourth International Poliomyelitis Congress, they heard some good news and bad. The good: in countries using wide-scale vaccination, the disease is already on the decline. The bad: polio is breaking out in parts of the world where it has not previously been recognized.

Polio is on the rise in the tropics and in the Communist countries of Eastern Europe. Specialists gave two explanations. The World Health Organization's Dr. Anthony M.M. Payne argued that the increase is apparent, not real, and the result of better diagnosis. Vaccinventor Jonas Salk offered the second explanation. "This is a disease of civilization." he said. "As countries adopt higher standards of public hygiene and sanitation, and infant mortality decreases, you get a greater number of children with no natural immunity against the disease." This probably explained recent polio flare-ups in parts of southern Europe and among upper-crust populations in South America. Soviet delegates reported that this was the explanation for their country's polio problem, acute only since 1955, and increasing in severity. Red China has been noting cases since 1952.

75 Million Shots. Vaccines of the general type developed by Dr. Salk have been widely used only in the U.S., Canada, Denmark, Australia and Israel. Noting 1956's 50% drop in polio in the U.S., the U.S. Public Health Service's Dr. Alexander Langmuir saw increasingly good results ahead: "With increasing immunization of the population under 40, a steady reduction in paralytic cases can be confidently anticipated." Denmark, long hard-hit by polio, had the brightest progress report: 99% of children up to the age of nine and 90% of all Danes aged ten to 40 have had shots, and the disease now occurs only sporadically. Around the world, 75 million people have had one or more shots of vaccine.

Most delegates favored a Salk-type (killed-virus) vaccine, but there was still some argument as to how best to make it safe. The U.S. uses the Mahoney strain, which is as safe as any other if actually killed, but is a vicious cause of paralysis if live virus accidentally gets through. Britain avoids Mahoney like the plague, uses a strain that causes less paralysis even if live particles get through. So does Europe generally.

No Needles. Proponents of a live but attenuated virus, in a vaccine made to be taken by mouth, predicted a swing to their method. Cincinnati's Dr. Albert Sabin (TIME, Oct. 15) suggested that his method might be the answer for poor countries whose people cannot afford three Salk shots at $1 each, or where migrant populations cannot be brought together three times at the right intervals.

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