Some of the finest people it has ever been my pleasure to know have been afflicted by, and survived polio. In all these cases, however, their experiences were long ago. In truth, I had honestly thought the disease had been largely eradicated from the planet.
It has not.
Published by Oxford University Press, in partnership with Hurst Publishers, Thomas Abraham’s new Polio; the Odyssey of Eradication, explains how not only has the campaign to eradicate this crippling disease taken far longer and cost much more than initially anticipated, it has been thwarted at many turns and become extraordinarily complicated due to matters wholly outside of the realm and reason of medical science.
Update: Polio; the Odyssey of Eradication has been named to the Wellcome Book Prize 2019 longlist. The Wellcome Book Prize “rewards exceptional works of literature that illuminate the many ways that health, medicine and illness touch our lives.”
