Polio Report

By last week, the number of U.S. polio cases had reached 5,207. This was not nearly so bad as last year's 7,792, at the same date, but many U.S. areas, hard hit, were justly alarmed. A willing press spread the alarm even to areas having small cause for worry (e.g., Rhode Island, which has had no new cases recently). The worst spots:

P: Winnebago County, Illinois, which includes Rockford (pop. 84,637). The city, which has had 163 cases and 19 deaths, waited last week to find out whether a spraying with DDT (TIME, Aug. 27), does any good. New cases fell off a little.

P: Tennessee (pop. 2,915,841) with 228 cases and Texas (pop. 6,414,824) with 681.

P: New Jersey (pop. 4,160,165) with 519 cases and 43 deaths. To control the disease, Trenton and nearby towns have quarantined their children from school, church, swimming pools, movies. Paterson has been sprayed with DDT. The State Director of Health says carefully that New Jersey has no epidemic, but has proclaimed a "state of emergency" and asked the Red Cross for nurses, quick.

Just how polio spreads is still uncertain. But the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis advises against swimming in a fresh-water pool in a polio area.

If research will do the trick, polio has the best chance of all diseases to be stopped. Last week the Foundation announced that its 1945 March of Dimes netted $16,589,874, a 50% increase over 1944. This represents about $860 (at last year's high case rate) for every polio case. Cancer, which kills around 170,000 persons a year, got about $4,000,000 this year in its one $5,000,000 public drive, only $23 per annual death.

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