With the skyrocketing cost of everything, labour shortages, extreme weather events, the refugee crisis, and war in the Ukraine, amongst the many challenges facing the world today, why should we take time to think about polio? After all, there hasn’t been a case in Canada for over 20 years.

The thing is, polio is a horrible disease that mainly strikes children under five. It can lead to death, life-long paralysis or muscle weakness, and, as survivors get older, post polio syndrome (I Survive Polio Every Day). Every child in the world – sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, grand-children, siblings – remain at risk until polio is gone forever.

There is no cure for polio, but it is in our power to wipe it from the face of the earth through vaccination. Polio is a human-specific virus, it can only survive and spread amongst people. If there is no human host, it will die out and be permanently eradicated.

In 1988, Rotary International and the World Health Organization launched the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. Since then, worldwide cases have dropped by 99.9%. It remains endemic in only two countries: Afghanistan – two in 2022 and four in 2021; Pakistan – 20 in 2022 and one in 2021.

Polio is almost gone, but as recent cases in Israel, the US and UK of unvaccinated people who returned from countries where polio persists demonstrate, the whole world remains at risk.

As routine vaccination rates fall, polio survivor hopes her story reverses urgent trend | CBC Radio

Vaccines nearly eradicated polio. This survivor urges anyone who doesn’t have the shot to get it | CBC Radio

The vaccine is oral, just two drops in the mouth can prevent a child from ever getting polio.

So how can you help to eradicate polio?

1. Ensure that you, and your child, are vaccinated.
2. Make a donation to the eradication effort, Donate to End Polio.

Although only a few cases have been reported so far in 2022, the millions of children born all over the world each year still need to be vaccinated until polio is eradicated.

3. Spread the word.

We are so close to eradicating polio forever. Let’s work together to make it happen.

It just takes two drops.

Learn More

GPEI – Global Polio Eradication Initiative

End Polio Now

Fun Fact

Did you know that the polio vaccine featured in a classic film? The song ‘A Spoonful of Sugar’ in the 1964 film Mary Poppins was inspired by the son of the composer telling his father about getting the polio vaccine (The odd connection between vaccination and ‘Mary Poppins’ | CNN).

Submitted by Rotary Club of Cranbrook Sunrise

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