Post-Polio Organization

This year Elaine and I joined a local organization of polio survivors called Polio Regina. At the end of May we attended a picnic at the home of a member and she sent us some of the pictures.

Poliomyelitis is a vaccine-preventable disease with a vaccine first introduced in 1955. I had polio in 1955 before the age of 2, just before the vaccine came out. There were many polio epidemics in Canada and world-wide. The man standing behind Elaine and I in the lower picture had polio during an epidemic in 1936. The last epidemic in Canada was in 1959, but there were isolated cases up to 1996 among sects who did not have their children vaccinated, and with contact from other countries.

There are major initiatives to eradicate polio world-wide. The World Health Organization had a target to eradicate polio by vaccinating children around the world by 2000. This target moved to 2005 and now to 2008. The Rotary Club International has raised $billions for this initiative with people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet donating $100s of millions. The difficulty has been reaching the children in some areas of south Asia and west-central Africa due to war and uncooperative governments. But there is optimism with coordinated effort that polio will be completely eradicated.