{"id":800019,"date":"2026-07-13T22:35:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T22:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/800019\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T22:35:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T22:35:09","slug":"last-polio-patient-using-iron-lung-passes-away-in-oklahoma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/800019\/","title":{"rendered":"Last Polio Patient Using Iron Lung Passes Away in Oklahoma"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The last surviving <a href=\"https:\/\/respiratory-therapy.com\/tag\/polio\/\" data-type=\"post_tag\" data-id=\"2180\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">polio<\/a> patient using an iron lung has passed away in Oklahoma, according to the Associated Press. <\/p>\n<p>Martha Lillard, who was diagnosed with the disease at age 5, passed away on June 26, 2026 at the age of 78 due to \u201cchronic pulmonary failure and post-polio syndrome,\u201d according to her sister, who also attributed the death to <a href=\"https:\/\/respiratory-therapy.com\/tag\/long-covid\/\" data-type=\"post_tag\" data-id=\"3460\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">long COVID<\/a>, the AP reports.<\/p>\n<p>Lillard is the last known US polio survivor to be using an iron lung machine, according to the AP. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/iron-lung-last-patient-died-polio-41e5b4da4f4e710344dd0872d7fcf987\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Read Lillard\u2019s story here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-small-font-size\">Image: ID 408524414 \u00a9 Raisamacouze | Dreamstime.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The last surviving polio patient using an iron lung has passed away in Oklahoma, according to the Associated&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":800020,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[49,48,84,2724,47675,281785],"class_list":["post-800019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-health","tag-infectious-diseases","tag-polio","tag-ventilation-noninvasive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/800020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}