Polio Vaccine Advertisements

The U.S. Today

The United States has had a long history with polio, and we were actually exposed to it on a daily basis for a long period of time. We ere exposed through milk, water, and food, but because of this exposure, kids tended to build up immunity overtime. The problem with polio is when there were advances in technology that caused us to lose our immunity to the disease. After the Second World War, polio attacked a war torn United States. With war came rapid advances in technology, and our healthcare, food, sewer, and water systems improved. With children no longer having daily exposure to small doses of the disease, they now were able to become extremely ill by contracting the disease.¹ This would continue until 1979, when the United States would have completely eradicated the disease among its citizens.² This does not mean that the United States was done with their conquest against the disease though. Even though the virus have been eliminated in most the world, parts of Africa, Pakistan, and Afghanistan still suffer from the Polio virus.

How was the United States so Successful in Eradicating Polio?

But how was the United States so successful in eliminating the disease from the country. This has to do with a few things, first the United States was stricken with the disease in a vulnerable age cohort, children.³ Parents rallied for children as they were effected by the disease. Campaigns such as the March of Dimes also existed, which helped raise money for families who had children with polio so they could treat their children with the iron lungs. But the most helpful of all was the advertising campaigns, which started in a patriotic post war America.

From pulling off advertising campaigns to get young men and women to join the war effort, firms began to advertise how to treat children for polio, and how to prevent it. There were ads in the newspapers for polio insurance, how effective the March of Dimes was, who founded the March of Dimes (FDR), and ads on the emotional toll a child with polio would take on a family. Below we can see an ad for the polio vaccine, and this plays with a parents emotions, showing that if their child gets polio, they will regret not getting them vaccinated. As I said above, the main cohort affected by the polio outbreak were kids, so this worked extremely well.

Ads were also included on everyday staples that people would buy such as milk bottles and their seals. The whole idea for this project and blog post came from the milk seal that is the feature image. The interesting thing about this 1953 milk seal though is that Dr. Salk had not fully released the vaccine by 1953. The vaccine for polio was released in 1955, with oral treatments being released in 1961.⁴

Today, some look back to this period in advertising as Americans are in a new pandemic, stricken with COVID-19. Advertising campaigns and celebrity support for the vaccine have already started, urging Americans to get vaccinated. The campaigns to get people to wear masks were also largely successful, but only because of government mandates and business policies requiring people to wear them. Within the next year as Pfizer say people will need a booster shot ⁵, we can see similar campaigns for COVID shots as the annual Influenza shots.

The World's Struggle

In talking about America's fight with polio, we missed the rest of the world. From my research, the rest of the world received polio vaccines and oral treatments from a joint venture with WHO and UNICEF.⁶ These organizations would distribute billions of polio treatments around the world. This was a great success with only three countries today still having the disease as an endemic. A majority of Africa and the Middle East has also stopped the spread of disease, but are not WHO certified free of polio. These countries continue to receive support from the WHO and UNICEF to distribute treatments in hard to read areas to help eradicate the disease once in for all. Worldwide, we only have 441 cases of polio because of these initiatives to push out preventative treatment, which is a large reduction from the 119,000 cases of paralytic polio that the United States had in 1950.⁴

Today, only the countries in blue, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Niger continue to have the disease within their borders ⁷. While Niger has not had polio in 2020, the country, it was only recently rid itself of the disease. It is not certified yet by WHO as polio free as well, which is why it is included in this map.

References

1. “History of Polio.” Timeline | History of Vaccines. The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Accessed May 14, 2021. https://www.historyofvaccines.org/timeline/polio.
2. “Polio Elimination in the U.S.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, October 25, 2019. https://www.cdc.gov/polio/what-is-polio/polio-us.html.
3. “Poliomyelitis.” World Health Organization. World Health Organization, July 22, 2019. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/poliomyelitis#:~:text=People most at risk,under 5 years of age.
4. The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. “Feature Article: Flashback - Parenting and Summer in the 1950s.” Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, July 11, 2018. https://www.chop.edu/news/feature-article-flashback-parenting-and-summer-1950s#:~:text=According to the Centers for, United%20States%20and%206%2C600%20deaths.
5. Lovelace, Berkeley. “Pfizer CEO Says Third Covid Vaccine Dose Likely Needed within 12 Months.” CNBC. CNBC, April 15, 2021. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/15/pfizer-ceo-says-third-covid-vaccine-dose-likely-needed-within-12-months.html.
6. UNICEF. “The Story of the End of Polio.” unicef. UNICEF, 2007. https://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/files/The_Story_of_the_End_of_Polio.pdf
7. “World Polio Day 2020.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, October 21, 2020. https://www.cdc.gov/globalhealth/immunization/wpd/index.html.
8. EndPolio. “What Is Polio.” endpolio. endpolio, 2021. https://www.endpolio.org/.