Last U.S. Polio Patient Dependent on Iron Lung Dies at 78

Martha Lillard, the final known American polio patient reliant on an iron lung, died June 26 in Shawnee, Oklahoma, at age 78. She contracted polio at five years old in 1953, just two years before the Salk vaccine became widely available, leaving her paralyzed from the neck down and dependent on the mechanical breathing device for 73 years.

Despite medical predictions that she would not survive past age 20, Lillard built a remarkably independent life. She attended school using an intercom phone system, later drove a specially modified vehicle, lived alone for extended periods while preparing her own meals, and pursued artistic interests including painting, poetry, and songwriting. Her family retrofitted an iron lung with a second motor to allow her to open and close the chamber herself—a modification that enabled capabilities unavailable to most iron lung patients. In February 2026, she married Baha Salh, a man from Egypt whom she had met online over 20 years earlier.

Lillard's death certificate lists chronic pulmonary failure and post-polio syndrome as causes of death. Her sister Cindy McVey attributes the fatal decline to long-haul COVID-19; Lillard contracted COVID-19 twice during the pandemic, after which her lung capacity dropped below 25 percent. In her final years, she spent nearly 24 hours daily in the iron lung. McVey described her sister as resilient and creative, noting that Lillard had even written her own obituary before her death.

Her passing marks the end of an era for iron lungs, machines that emerged as critical life-support technology during polio's peak in the 1950s. The iron lung uses negative pressure—a motor drives air out of a sealed cylinder containing the patient's body (with only the head exposed), forcing lungs to expand, then reverses to allow exhalation. Tens of thousands of Americans relied on these devices at the disease's height. Following widespread vaccination campaigns starting in 1955, U.S. polio cases fell from thousands annually to fewer than 100 in the 1960s and fewer than 10 in the 1970s. The U.S. declared polio eliminated in 1979. By 2004, only 39 Americans still used iron lungs; by 2024, when Paul Alexander—the longest-surviving iron lung patient—died at 78, the number had dwindled to near zero.

Lillard's life exemplified both the devastating impact of polio and the power of human determination. Her death removes one of the last living connections to an era when polio paralyzed thousands of children annually and iron lungs represented humanity's mechanical answer to respiratory failure—a role now entirely supplanted by modern ventilation technology.