Martha Lillard, the last known American polio patient who depended on an iron lung to breathe, died June 26 in Shawnee, Oklahoma. She was 78 years old, nearly six decades past the age doctors once told her family she would reach.
Her sister, Cindy McVey, told the Associated Press that Lillard’s death certificate lists chronic pulmonary failure and post-polio syndrome as causes. McVey said long COVID contributed as well, after Lillard contracted COVID-19 twice during the pandemic. In her final two years, the disease and post-polio syndrome left her confined to the iron lung nearly around the clock.
With Lillard’s passing, a machine whose parts date to the 1940s falls silent for the last time in America. Her sister acknowledged as much through tears.
“But since she’s the last one, we don’t need that anymore.”