The iron lung and the fight to end polio

[Music] many people today wouldn't recognize what this is and that's an amazing thing because it shows how much progress we've made against polio it's a terrible disease and in most countries now largely forgotten the paralysis from polio starts with your legs and then can get up into this diaphragm area and so a lot of people died simply because they can't breathe and that's where this comes in to help out this is called an arm lung it's a mechanical respirator there's a pump down here that creates enough air pressure that even though your diaphragm is paralyzed it allows you to keep breathing so your head sticking out here it's pretty grim but it used to keep thousands of people alive the height of the polio epidemic in the united states was in the 1940s and 50s this used to be something that you could see rows and rows up and lots of hospitals kids lying in here and then that pump actually allowing them to breathe the reason we don't have kids needing these anymore is because of the polio vaccine we've reduced the number of cases by 99.9 percent and now wildpool is only in two countries afghanistan and pakistan during this pandemic the world benefited from the precious resource of the polio program where all that personnel shifted their focus to help contain the spread of coven 19. as much as we've achieved in the polio fight i can't think of a more important time for us to double down and finish the job the global polio eradication initiative has a great plan that will do more than just eradicate polio they'll also raise vaccination rates and improve health very dramatically the sarn lung was a great tool but now we need the arn will of everybody involved in this fight and it's thanks to the commitment of rotary and many other partners that makes me confident we can create a world where no child will ever be paralyzed by polio [Music] again

Channel: Bill Gates

Views: 1,211,293

Keywords: Bill Gates, polio, iron lung, polio eradication, mechanical respirator, polio epidemic, wild polio, polio vaccine, pandemic, Polio Program, Global Polio Eradication Initiative, Rotary, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Id: xKLczqn3COU

Length: 2min 19sec (139 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 20 2021