The death of one of the last known people to rely on an iron lung has marked the end of an extraordinary chapter in medical history.
For decades, Martha Lillard lived with the enormous machine that kept her breathing after polio left her paralysed as a child.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Polio has been detected in Perth for the first time in more than 50 years
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Her death at 79 has prompted reflection on a disease that once terrified families around the world, but which most younger Australians only know from history books.
According to Australia’s leading immunisation experts, that extraordinary public health success has also created an unexpected challenge.
“We are in many ways victims of our own success,” National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance (NCIRS) director Professor Kristine Macartney told 7NEWS.com.au.
“And victims is perhaps the wrong word, but you know we see the success of immunisation as not seeing disease.
“Some people have become complacent about the need for keeping up to date with immunisations, but that shouldn’t be the case because so many of these diseases haven’t disappeared and polio is a perfect example of that.”
The disease many Australians have never seen
Before vaccines, polio was one of the world’s most feared diseases.
Spread by the poliovirus, it could cause lifelong paralysis and, in its most severe cases, leave people unable to breathe on their own after the virus attacked the muscles controlling the lungs.
Those patients were often placed inside iron lungs — large, negative-pressure ventilators that helped expand and contract the chest so they could continue breathing.
The machines became an enduring symbol of the global polio epidemics of the 1940s and 1950s, with hospital wards lined with rows of patients fighting to stay alive.
Mass vaccination campaigns transformed that reality.
Australia eliminated continuous transmission of polio in 2000 and, for many younger Australians, the disease exists only in history books.
Success can breed complacency
While Australia may have eliminated continuous transmission of polio, the virus has not disappeared.
Wild poliovirus remains endemic in Afghanistan and Pakistan, while outbreaks continue elsewhere in under-immunised communities.
The reminder hit closer to home earlier this year when traces of poliovirus were detected in a Perth wastewater sample during routine surveillance.
Health authorities stressed the finding posed a very low risk to the community and was most likely linked to an overseas traveller, but said it highlighted the importance of maintaining high vaccination coverage and ongoing surveillance.
Australia continues to maintain extensive surveillance and high vaccination rates to help prevent the virus from becoming re-established.
Macartney said “we are in many ways victims of our own success”, with diseases such as polio now so rarely seen that many people underestimate the threat they still pose.
“It’s critical that we maintain very high continuous vaccination rates against polio because, although we are on the cusp of eliminating this virus from the globe, there are still many polio outbreaks around the world,” she said.
“They don’t present an immediate risk to Australia because of our high vaccination rates but, were they to fall, that does pose a risk.”
Macartney said the lesson extends far beyond polio, with dozens of other vaccine-preventable diseases still circulating around the world.
“The only disease that we have eradicated through vaccination from the world is the disease of smallpox,” she said.
“All of the other, more than 20, diseases that we routinely vaccinate against are still out there. They’re still a threat to us if we don’t vaccinate against them.”
She pointed to rising measles cases overseas as a reminder that vaccine-preventable diseases can quickly return when immunisation rates fall.
The warning comes as Australia’s childhood vaccination rates continue to trend downwards. A major report released this month found immunisation coverage among one-year-olds had fallen from 95 per cent in 2020 to 92 per cent in 2025.
“These diseases are not trivial. They are very, very significant. And they are devastating, particularly because they can be prevented,” Macartney said.
She said Martha Lillard’s death should serve as a reminder of what vaccination has achieved, rather than a signal that diseases such as polio belong solely to history.
“This historic milestone in the United States, for all of us to remember, that polio can still strike anyone in the world, anywhere, and it has devastating effects with lifelong paralysis in those who survive, and some people die from polio,” she said.
‘I didn’t know how serious the disease could be’
After decades working as a hospital-based physician, Macartney has seen the devastating reality of vaccine-preventable diseases up close.
For all the discussion around vaccination rates and disease elimination, she says the moments that stay with her aren’t the statistics — they’re the conversations with families left wishing they had made a different decision.
“One of the saddest things to hear is when someone says, ‘I didn’t vaccinate because I didn’t know how serious the disease could be’,” she said.
For Macartney, those conversations are a painful reminder that many people only discover how serious vaccine-preventable diseases can be after they strike.
With misinformation continuing to circulate online, Macartney urged Australians to seek advice from qualified health professionals and trusted medical sources when making decisions about immunisation.
“Vaccines have proven themselves to save lives, and we need to continue to protect ourselves against these diseases through the use of these safe vaccines,” she said. For Macartney, Martha Lillard’s death is the end of an extraordinary life but also a reminder of a time when diseases such as polio changed lives forever — and of what modern medicine has spared millions of people from ever having to endure.
The iron lung has almost disappeared from the world. Macartney hopes the memory of why it existed never does.
