In a time when many have forgotten the threat of infectious diseases like polio, I feel a duty as a Rotary member to remind the public that polio anywhere is a threat everywhere.
I have a personal story about polio that happened to my oldest brother and another man who was my roommate in college. My brother’s case was only a mild one that left one leg slightly shorter than the other. My college roommate was paralyzed from the waist down. Both cases were before the vaccine was developed.
The polio vaccine is one of the greatest public health achievements of our time, protecting against a paralyzing and potentially life-threatening virus that once struck fear in the hearts of parents prior to the advent of the vaccine in 1955. Since 1988, Rotary and its partners in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative have reduced polio cases by 99.9 percent worldwide, sparing more than 20 million people from paralysis. Today the wild polio virus exists in only a small area between Afghanistan and Pakistan, with efforts to eradicate it completely from the world.