Polio used to be a devastating and much feared disease in the UK and across the world. Caused by the poliomyelitis virus, in the absence of vaccination, infection results in paralysis in around one in 200 and death in approximately 5-10% of these cases.1

Thanks to the introduction of safe and effective vaccines in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the condition has largely been forgotten as a public health concern in most high resource settings, including in the UK. Who knows about “iron lungs” these days? Indeed, after the establishment of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) in 1988, we have seemingly been on the verge of worldwide polio eradication for a decade or more.2 Africa was declared free of wild polio in August 2020 and only two small pockets of wild poliovirus type 1 remain, in Afghanistan and Pakistan.