Martha Lillard, Last U.S. Polio Patient Using Iron Lung, Dies at 78

Martha Lillard, the last U.S. polio patient using an iron lung, died June 26 in Oklahoma at age 78. Her sister Cindy McVey said long-haul COVID-19 contributed to the death. A death certificate listed chronic pulmonary failure and post-polio syndrome as causes.

Lillard had contracted polio shortly after turning 5 and remained dependent on the device for the rest of her life. Doctors had told Lillard she was not expected to live past age 20. She attended grade school for two hours daily with tutoring afterward and completed high school at Shawnee High School through an intercom system.

Therapy allowed partial use of her left arm and legs, though she could move the arm only side to side at the waist. Lillard lived alone for many years, prepared her own meals, and drove for a period. After the September 11, 2001 attacks she met Baha Salh in an online chat room.

They communicated for more than 20 years and married in February after he obtained a visa to travel to Oklahoma. McVey described the couple as soulmates and said Salh is extremely brokenhearted. Lillard contracted COVID-19 twice.

She had less than 25 percent lung capacity before those infections. In her final five years she could not leave home, and for the past two years she remained in the iron lung nearly 24 hours a day. She wrote poems, composed songs, and assisted animal rescue efforts on Facebook as a Humane Society volunteer.

Lillard wrote her own obituary and later updated it to state she died of long-haul COVID-19. In recent years she and her sister sought repairs for one of her iron lungs. McVey said through tears that the search is no longer needed.

Polio vaccines became available in the United States in 1955. A national campaign reduced annual cases to fewer than 100 in the 1960s and fewer than 10 in the 1970s, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. The disease was declared eliminated in the country in 1979.