Bruce Thorley
Medical Scientist
Bruce Thorley is the Head of the Australian National Enterovirus Reference Laboratory and Chief Investigator for the National Poliovirus Surveillance Program. The laboratory is accredited by the World Health Organization as a Polio Regional Reference Laboratory to test specimens from Australia and neighbouring countries for poliovirus infection in children with acute flaccid paralysis. The laboratory also monitors Australia’s polio-free status by testing for poliovirus in wastewater at sentinel sites.
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May 20, 2026
Polio - Past, Present and Post Polio Syndrome
Polio, the condition that spurned innovations from Physiotherapy, vaccines, Intensive Care Units and Rehabilitation Medicine is one of those diseases we’re taught as “solved”, yet the people who survived Australia’s epidemics are walking into clinics right now with new weakness, pain, fatigue and loss of function. That gap between what we remember and what patients live with is where this conversation sits, starting with iron lungs and ending with the very practical question: how do we recognise...