A girl is treated for suspected cholera infection at a hospital in Sanaa, Yemen. There were more than 1 million cases of cholera in the country between April 2017 and April 2018. Hani Mohammed/AP hide caption
polio
This did not really happen. Cows' heads did not emerge from the bodies of people newly inoculated against smallpox. But fear of the vaccine was so widespread that it prompted British satirist James Gillray to create this spoof in 1802. Institute of the History of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University hide caption
Poliovirus, long a scourge, has been modified by Duke University researchers for experimental use as a brain cancer treatment. Juan Gaertner/Science Source hide caption
A Pakistani health worker administers the oral polio vaccine to a child during a campaign in Karachi on May 7. Because of past attacks on vaccinators, security personnel are often assigned to accompany them. Rizwan Tabassum/AFP/Getty Images hide caption
A Pakistani policeman guards a team of polio vaccinators during an immunization drive in Karachi on January 22. Officials have stepped up protection in the wake of the January 18 attack. Rizwan Tabassum/AFP/Getty Images hide caption
tk (Dr Naveed Sadozai on the right) (screencap from video) Every Last Child Polio Eradication Initiative hide caption
An Afghan health worker vaccinates a child as part of a campaign to eliminate polio, on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, in April 2017. Rahmat Gul/AP hide caption
Nurses give the oral polio vaccine to a Syrian child in a refugee camp in Turkey. The oral polio vaccine used throughout most of the developing world contains a form of the virus that has been weakened in the laboratory. But it's still a live virus. Carsten Koall/Getty Images hide caption
A woman in a rural area of Kenya examines an intrauterine device during a visit from a outreach team sent by a family planning organization. Jonathan Torgovnik/Getty Images hide caption
From left: Emmanuel Kwame lost his sight to river blindness as a young man in Ghana; a bed net keeps mosquitoes away from a mother and child in a Somalian hospital; extracting a guinea worm from an infected person. Getty Images and NPR hide caption
Dennis Ogbe practiced by throwing rocks and auto parts — and now is a world-class shot-putter among athletes with disabilities. Above, he competes in the Parapan American Games. Gerardo Zavala/LatinContent/Getty Images hide caption
A health official inks a child's finger to indicate she has received a polio vaccine last month at a camp of people displaced by Islamist extremists in Nigeria. Sunday Alamba/AP hide caption
Gautam Lewis, now 39, poses with some of the photographs he has taken that trace the life and work of Mother Teresa, who took him in when he was 3. The images are part of an exhibition Lewis has staged in Kolkata as an homage to the woman he calls his "second mother." Rohan Chakravarty for NPR hide caption
Ado Ibrahim carries his son Aminu through a village in northern Nigeria. Aminu was paralyzed by polio in 2012. David P. Gilkey/NPR hide caption