JawaPos.com – Paul Alexander, a polio sufferer who spent almost his entire life in an iron lung, has died at the age of 78.
Polio, also known as poliomyelitis, is a highly contagious viral disease that primarily affects children under the age of five.
The disease is usually passed from one person to another through contact with the feces of an infected individual, or through a person’s sneeze or cough.
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Once it enters the body, the polio virus reproduces in the throat and intestines and can sometimes attack the nervous system, causing paralysis.
Meanwhile, iron lungs were introduced as a result of the polio epidemic that occurred in Europe and the US during the first half of the 20th century.
The first iron lung was used in 1928 to save the life of an eight-year-old girl at Boston Children’s Hospital.
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This device is a large horizontal cylinder that acts as an artificial respirator, working by mimicking the human breathing process.
Alexander was one of the last few people to use an iron lung because of polio.
Alexander contracted the viral disease when he was six years old, in the summer of 1952 while living in Texas.
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At that time, an effective polio vaccine had not been licensed until 1955. Although many people who contracted polio did not show any symptoms, about one in 200 people became paralyzed for life.
Among those who are paralyzed, between five percent and ten percent die because the muscles needed for breathing stop working.