Service Above Self: End Polio Now

By Medicine Hat Rotary Club on September 25, 2024.

People are tragically aware of “long COVID,” but even older horrors are “late effects of polio.”

As a quick reminder, Poliomyelitis is a virus spread person-to-person usually through water contaminated by human waste. Polio attacks the nervous system. There is no cure, but there is now, after many years of development, a safe and effective vaccine against the wild polio virus.

Because polio affects children under the age of five most often, an aggressive worldwide vaccination campaign was launched in 1988. Rotary International is a partner in that effort through the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, and through its own vaccination efforts with End Polio Now and Polio Plus, a broader-range support effort.

As dreadful as the onset of polio is with its crippling effects and once iron lung treatment, the virus can attack its victims again as soon as 15 years later, yet another reason to End Polio Now. Since the beginning of the vaccination campaign, polio has been eradicated in 99.9 per cent of countries, reaching 3 billion children in 122 countries. The disease is now endemic in only Afghanistan and Pakistan. But efforts must continue.

If vaccinations were to stop today, it is estimated that 200,000 children per year could be paralyzed and vulnerable to “late effects of polio,” as would many adults. It costs a mere $3 to inoculate one person, a very smart investment, indeed.

Polio Plus is the second Rotary International anti-polio initiative. Along with vaccinations, it provides supportive equipment like hand-operated bicycles for those who have been crippled by the disease.

It distributes insecticide-treated bed nets for countries where malaria is prevalent and has already reached 1.2 million children. It coordinates additional medical treatment and offers Vitamin A drops to reduce susceptibility to other infectious diseases.

Another Polio Plus effort underway is to provide clean water and sanitation to remote communities, often to camps of displaced people to make sure that they are not drinking or bathing in contaminated water. The Polio Plus network has also been utilized to analyze and contain outbreaks of Ebola in 2014 and of yellow fever starting in 2023 and continuing today in 13 countries in the World Health Organization’s African Region.

During World Polio Day, October 24, 2024, donations made to End Polio Now and Polio Plus will be matched 2-to-1, tripling their impact. Go to endpolio.org to make your donation.

This column is contributed by members of the Medicine Hat Rotary Club

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