Last U.S. Polio Survivor in an Iron Lung Dies After the Machine Started to Break Down

https://people.com/the-last-us-polio-patient-in-iron-lung-dies-78-12016065

Last U.S. Polio Survivor in an Iron Lung Dies After the Machine Started to Break Down and They Couldn’t Find Anyone to Repair It
Martha Ann Lillard’s sister said it was “hard to locate” parts for the obsolete iron lung, some of which are from the 1940s
By Cara Lynn Shultz
Updated on July 10, 2026 04:43PM EDT

Martha Ann Lillard, the last U.S. polio patient who used an iron lung to survive, has died at age 78.

The Shawnee, Okla., resident first experienced symptoms of the disease on her fifth birthday in 1953, she told KFOR 8 days before her death. “I woke up and it was sunny outside, and I started to sit up, and my neck was killing me,” she said. “I couldn’t lift my head off the pillow.”

“After four days, I went unconscious. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move my arms or legs,” she explains. Lillard had contracted polio — just two years before a vaccine would be introduced that would help eliminate cases of the devastating disease in the U.S.

At the time, an iron lung — a full-body ventilator — was the go-to treatment for polio patients. “They usually didn’t like to put children in because [children] fought it, but I didn’t,” Lillard said. “I liked it. It felt good to breathe.”

Polio, which is caused by the extremely contagious poliovirus, is “a crippling and potentially deadly disease that affects the nervous system,” according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It lives in the feces of an infected person, but can also be spread via eating or drinking food that’s been contaminated. Although most people who contract polio do not exhibit symptoms — or if they do, they experience flu-like fevers, tiredness, nausea, headache, nasal congestion, and sore throat — the CDC says 1 in 200 to 1 in 2,000 people will develop paralysis. It was famously the case with U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who needed a wheelchair after he contracted the disease.

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