“In Australia polio is now largely forgotten but if you were a child growing up in the first half of the twentieth century, you were at real risk of getting it.

Like the Zika virus now, poliomyelitis was not well understood, without a vaccine and it struck terror into communities.

Polio isn’t yet entirely eradicated from the world in two ways. The wild virus is still in Pakistan and Afghanistan. And many of those children in Australia and elsewhere who contracted it last century are now experiencing debilitating symptoms again – the late effects of polio.”