Rotary leader says four countries still struggle to end polio epidemic

From The Daily News in Midland, Texas:

More than five decades after it was reported Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine had worked to immunize those who received it, four countries still feel polio’s scourge.

An advocate for worldwide eradication says war, displacement of people, bad water and religious differences have caused polio to remain a threat in Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and Nigeria.

“It’ll take peace on earth” to rid the world of the disease, said David Carpenter, Rotary International’s Polio Challenge coordinator for an area that includes Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and part of New York.

Carpenter spoke at Midland’s Grace A. Dow Memorial Library Oct. 29 after a showing of “The Polio Crusade,” (pictured) a one-hour film produced for PBS’ “American Experience” program.

Rotary has committed to raise $200 million to match $355 million in challenge grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to support immunization campaigns in developing countries. Some $200 million has been raised so far.

About 20 people viewed the movie, and more came to a reception where Carpenter spoke. To help his audience remember the names of the countries where people remain at risk of polio, Carpenter suggested using the first letter of each country to spell “pain.”

As war displaces people and they move to populated areas, they carry polio with them, he said. Because the polio virus enters the mouth by water, food or physical contact, the disease spreads through contaminated water supplies, Carpenter said.

Religious differences, such as those between Christians and Muslims, may prevent people from being vaccinated. Nigerian Muslims didn’t trust vaccines made in a Christian country, so it was made in another Muslim country, Turkey.

Carol Feeder, who was in the audience, traveled to India in 2004 and to Ghana in 2007 to administer vaccine drops on children’s tongues as part of the Rotary effort.

“With both places, you saw the poverty and you saw the needs, but you also saw wonderful people,” she said. “They were so nice and so welcoming.”

Statistics show good news. So far in 2009, there were 1,198 cases of polio worldwide, compared with 1,406 during the same period last year. In 1985, the figure was 350,000. The number of cases in Nigeria is 40 percent lower than a year ago.

The film opens with stories from the small town of Wytheville, Va., where the most severe polio epidemic in America per capita was reported in 1950.

The March of Dimes was organized to collect dimes from people all over the country to fight the disease and, on April 12, 1955, the organization announced Jonas Salk’s vaccine, made from dead viruses, had worked in field trials.

It described the iron lung, a breathing machine that saved the lives of many victims although it meant they were immobile and had to be tended through portals in the device, and field trials at centers for “crippled children” and the “feeble minded.”

Gerald Beck of Bridgeport, 57, came into the world too early to benefit from the Salk vaccine. He contracted the disease in the hospital when he was born in 1952, and its effects have lasted throughout his life.

Because of the disease, his right leg is smaller and much weaker than his left. Although he drove a semi for most of his adult life, he stopped working seven years ago.

He’d needed surgery to fuse his ankle when he was 16 and, in order to drive, he had to hold his foot “up in the air” because he couldn’t bend the ankle.

“After 25 years it just kind of was getting to be too much,” he said in a phone interview.

“It tears the muscles down faster,” he said of polio. His doctor told him “you can get out of the truck and last another 10, 15, 20 years, or stay in and you won’t be walking.”

Still, Beck counts his blessings. He played basketball in school, later fathered two children and pretty much did what he wanted with his life.

Growing up, he shrugged off teasing comments that he was a “gimp” because he walked with a limp.

“I got pretty lucky,” he said. “After a while you just learn to live with it because you know there’s nothing you can do about it.”

He now must deal with post-polio problems.

“The older you get, the harder it is,” Beck continued. “You get a lot more pain, a lot more muscle spasms.”