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BART ROMBAUT AN. R. ACAD. NAC. FARM.

which had suffered repeated epidemics, a shift in the age of incidence
occurred, with more children, teenagers and young adults becoming
affected (7).

FIGURE. 3. Polio patients in iron lungs (with credit to the WHO:
http://www.polioeradication.org/features/photos/photogallery.asp).

Meanwhile, the Austrian physicians Karl Landsteiner and Erwin
Poppen, made the first hypothesis that poliomyelitis might be caused
by a virus. After the second World War, large epidemics occurred
all over the world. In 1952, there are 58,000 cases of polio in the
U.S.A., the most ever. In the European Region, an estimated 28,500
children were annually paralysed by poliomyelitis. «Polio hysteria»
is a fact (2).

THE EMERGENCE OF POLIOEPIDEMICS

As described previously, poliomyelitis was for many years
primarily an occasional disease of infants and this pattern is still
seen today in communities with primitive sanitation, where the

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