On March 8, the Postal Service issued two stamps, one honoring Jonas Salk, M.D. (1914-1995), and the other honoring Albert Sabin, M.D. (1906-1993). Dr. Salk’s image will be on a 63-cent stamp (for a 2-ounce first-class letter) and Dr. Sabin’s on an 87-cent stamp (for a 3-ounce first-class letter). The stamps are part of the Postal Service’s “Distinguished Americans” series.

Both Dr. Salk and Dr. Sabin dreamed of a polio-free world, and that vision is within reach, experts say.

“The dream was… to find a way to protect against paralytic polio,” said Dr. Salk in a 1994 interview. “Once I found it, I soon discovered, where there’s a will, there’s a way. . . If there was the same will that corresponded to the way, polio would have been eradicated from the face of the earth by now.”

In February, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) declared Egypt and Niger to be polio-free, bringing the number of polio-endemic countries to an all-time low of four: Nigeria, India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. As recently as 1988, polio was prevalent in more than 125 countries, affecting 350,000 people, while last year, there were fewer than 2,000 reported cases of polio in only a handful of counties, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

The drive to eliminate polio worldwide now has entered a new phase targeted at the two surviving strains of poliovirus, says WHO, one of four spearheading partners of the GPEI, along with UNICEF, Rotary International and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Two thousand cases of paralytic polio in the United States, if they can be prevented, are 2,000 cases too many,” Dr. Sabin said in 1961. “There is no irreducible minimum. . . I disagree with that. I think the irreducible minimum is no polio cases at all.”

The menace of polio, a viral infection that affected mostly children, caused widespread fear and panic in the United States during the first half of the 20th century. In 1952, the most severe polio epidemic year on record, more than 57,800 people were stricken with the disease. The most famous polio patient was the founder of the March of Dimes, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

In the 1940s and 1950s, driven by worsening epidemics, Dr. Sabin and Dr. Salk raced to find a safe and effective polio vaccine, each using a different method. By 1953, Dr. Salk and his team at the University of Pittsburgh had developed the “killed” polio vaccine, which was administered by injection. It was licensed in 1955 and currently is used in the U.S. Dr. Sabin developed the “live” (attenuated) oral polio vaccine, which was licensed in the U.S. in 1962 and is used by most other countries worldwide.

“In the same spirit that Dr. Salk and Dr. Sabin tackled the polio epidemic, the March of Dimes is putting its will behind finding ways to prevent premature birth,” says Dr. Jennifer L. Howse, president of the March of Dimes. “Prematurity is now the nation’s leading killer of newborns, and now our collective dream is to put an end to this new epidemic.”

Today’s stamp issues bring to six the number of postage stamps that have recognized the March of Dimes or its work. The only other individual in March of Dimes history to appear on a stamp is Virginia Apgar, M.D., who developed the Apgar Score, the system for evaluating an newborn’s physical condition. Dr. Apgar held various positions at the March of Dimes from 1959 to 1974, including vice president for medical affairs.

The March of Dimes is a national voluntary health agency whose mission is to improve the health of babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth, and infant mortality. Founded in 1938, the March of Dimes funds programs of research, community services, education, and advocacy to save babies and in 2003 launched a campaign to address the increasing rate of premature birth. For more information, visit the March of Dimes Web site at marchofdimes.com or its Spanish language Web site at nacersano.org.

© 2006 HealthNewsDigest.com