Martha Lillard, last US polio patient using iron lung, dies at 78 in Oklahoma

In this photo provided by Cindy McVey, her sister Martha Lillard rests in her Iron Lung on Friday, February 6, 2026 in Shawnee, Okla. (Cindy McVey via AP) 2026-07-11T00:58:17Z Martha Lillard had just turned 5 when she was diagnosed with Polio and depended on an Iron Lung to live. She died last month in Oklahoma, the last U.S. Polio patient who used the machine, her sister said. She was 78. “They told her she wasn’t supposed to live past 20 years old,” Lillard’s younger sister, Cindy McVey, told The Associated Press on Friday. “She had the enthusiasm and the drive to continue living and make the best of her life.” While McVey doesn’t know the official cause of death, she attributes it to the effects of long-haul COVID-19. Lillard died on June 26. Lillard slept in the Iron Lung cylinder that encased her body as the air pressure in the chamber forced air in and out of her lungs. As a child, she went to grade school for two hours a day and was tutored the rest of the time. She attended Shawnee High School by using a phone system that allowed her to interact with her teachers and classmates through an intercom in her classrooms. Her family went on road trips to Missouri thanks to a custom trailer and her father calling hotels to find out if they had doors wide enough to accommodate the machine Lillard slept in. Lillard was even able to drive for a time. “To me, it was just normal,” recalled McVey, 75. Polio was once one of the nation’s most feared diseases, with annual outbreaks causing thousands of cases of paralysis. The disease primarily affects children. Vaccines became available starting in 1955. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a national vaccination campaign cut the annual number of U.S. cases to fewer than 100 in the 1960s and fewer than 10 in the 1970s. In 1979, Polio was declared eliminated in the U.S., meaning it was no longer routinely spread. (