Polio: It’s Not Here Now, But It Can Come Again

John W. Aldis, MD, MPH&TM John is a retired family practice physician living in Jefferson County. After graduation from the University of Kansas School of Medicine in 1971 he completed his internship at Gorgas Hospital in the Panama Canal Zone before serving nine years on overseas tours in the U.S. Navy in the Philippines, Taiwan, and Guam while also completing his Family Practice Residency training in Jacksonville, FL, becoming board-certified in family medicine following that training. He then joined the U.S. Foreign Service and served 18 years as a U.S. Embassy physician on tours in Mali, Indonesia, Nigeria, and China as well as completing his Master’s Degree in Public Health and Tropical Medicine at the Tulane School of Public Health. After moving back to Shepherdstown, WV and into his boyhood home in 2001, Dr. Aldis served ten years as the first volunteer medical director for the Free Clinic in Ranson, WV. He also worked 10 years in the vaccine-research programs at Fort Detrick and NIH, one year as the founding medical director of the Home-Based Primary Care Program at the Martinsburg Veterans Administration Hospital, and several years in addiction-medicine clinics in the Eastern Panhandle. Currently Dr. Aldis focuses on gardening with his wife, Pheny, of 57 years. Their two daughters and three granddaughters (living near D.C. and in New Mexico) visit when possible.