End Polio Now!
Club member Wayne Staton acted as our program this week. There was a PBS program on Monday evening that gave the history of polio through the development and distribution and first the Salk vaccine and then the Sabine vaccine. This prompted a good deal of dicussion that Wayne continued by moderating a discussion of polio and the Rotary Polio Plus Program.
Polio (also called poliomyelitis) is a contagious, historically devastating disease that was virtually eliminated from the Western hemisphere in the second half of the 20th century. Although polio has plagued humans since ancient times, its most extensive outbreak occurred in the first half of the 1900s before the vaccination, created by Jonas Salk, became widely available in 1955.
At the height of the polio epidemic in 1952, nearly 60,000 cases with more than 3,000 deaths were reported in the United States alone. Interestingly, according to a documentary on PBS, this epidemic was likely casued in large part by the advent of the city water systems that distributed clean hygenic water starting in the 20th Century. This water system deleted many germs and viruses which had previously been distributed with the resulting build-up of immnunities to the diseases by many who drank the water as children.
However, with widespread vaccination, wild-type polio, or polio occurring through natural infection, was eliminated from the United States by 1979 and the Western hemisphere by 1991.
Polio is transmitted primarily through the ingestion of material contaminated with the virus found in stool (poop). Not washing hands after using the bathroom and drinking contaminated water were common culprits in the transmission of the disease.
Prevention: In the United States, it's currently recommended that children have four doses of inactivated polio vaccination (IPV) between the ages of 2 months and 6 years.
Wayne became polio victim at about age 11. He discussed his feelings and how others at that time did what was needed to survive and live life as normally as possible.
Rotary's Polio Plus...after 20 years of hard work, Rotary and its partners are on the brink of eradicating this tenacious disease, but a strong push is needed now to root it out once and for all. It is a window of opportunity of historic proportions.
Your contribution will help Rotary raise $200 million to match $355 million in challenge grants received from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The resulting $555 million will directly support immunization campaigns in developing countries, where polio continues to infect and paralyze children, robbing them of their futures and compounding the hardships faced by their families.
As long as polio threatens even one child anywhere in the world, children everywhere remain at risk. The stakes are that high.
If you would like to make a donation to Polio Plus you may do so through Archie...or click the button below.
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