Polio Rears Its Ugly Head Again

It's a disease that crippled President Franklin D Roosevelt, and plagued a generation of Americans, before the Salk vaccine was developed in 1955.

Leonard and Rita White were stricken that same year and they were hospitalized for months. To everyone's surprise, they survived.

Says Rita White, "I don't know if it was a miracle or we were just fortunate. We were later told that we were the only two children who walked out of Children's Hospital that year without a brace and a wheelchair."

What the Whites had -- polio -- has become a distant memory in this country and health officials once thought they would eradicate it worldwide by the end of this year.

But suddenly, after years of steady progress, the disease is spreading again, reports CBS News Correspondent Gretchen Carlson.

The epidemic is centered in the northern region of Nigeria, where 60 new cases have been confirmed in just the past week. The local government stopped administering polio vaccines there last August, in part, health officials say, out of distrust of the United States.

Says UNICEF's Heidi Larson, "There was some growing resistance and concern that this was an effort to basically de-populate the Muslim population … (they were concerned) that there were sterilization elements in it."

According to UNICEF, the U.S.-led war in Iraq inadvertently inflamed a public health crisis.

Says Larson, "We did some interviews with community members who explicitly said, 'We've seen the news on Iraq, we've seen the news on the Middle East and we're supposed to take these vaccines now?'"

With the virus now re-surfacing in 10 African nations, and not yet eradicated in parts of Asia, a massive vaccination campaign to reach 74 million children is planned for the fall.

There's still hope polio will be wiped out worldwide by the end of this year. But that effort is in danger of being derailed by disinformation spreading just as fast as the virus itself.

By Gretchen Carlson