Below is a post by Lawrence Central President Bob Swan:
This past Saturday I was honored to attend the Rotary Foundation Banquet in Overland Park and to meet one of PolioPlus’s most inspiring leaders, Ann Lee Hussey. Her after-dinner presentation both informed and motivated the several hundred in attendance at the Rotary District 5710 event.
Ms. Hussey related that there were 1,000 cases of new polio cases per day when Rotary International began its noble campaign in 1985. She shared the pain and helplessness caused by the disease through sharing her own experiences as a child who contacted the dread disease in Maine in 1955 at the age of 17 months. Ann Lee was initially paralyzed from the waist on down, and the next eight years had many surgeries and endless physical therapy, three times a week. She faced the taunting of childhood peers—a “cripple” she was called back then as she struggled to cover up and hide the braces on her legs.
Through a lifelong commitment to her health and rehabilitation, Ann Lee Hussey became a productive member of society—but her greatest contribution lay ahead. In India and other lands, seeing children crawling on all fours, she experienced her “Rotary moment” when she saw a small polio victim struggling just as she had, with great fortitude and courage—but with far less support than Ann Lee had been fortunate to receive in the United States sixty five decades earlier. She decided to dedicate her life to polio’s eradication—and has now done more than 20 NIDs—National Immunization Day trips around the globe.
Rotary International’s commitment and leadership inspired a worldwide campaign to eradicate polio once and for all. The CDC, World Health Organization, UNICEF and Rotary International are now full partners in the crucial home stretch of eradicating polio and are now seeing the lowest number of new polio cases in recorded history. With only several dozen new cases per year, just three countries remain that have experienced new cases of polio the past twelve months. But these are very difficult countries, with war and extreme poverty and terrorism—Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. One health worker, Mohammed Ishag, was shot and killed while immunizing children. Rotarians are on the ground in these countries doing NIDs—and in Nigeria alone there have been numerous terrorist acts during the past month. A number of other countries are still at risk—but funding is lacking to deal with these nations. So time is of the essence in this noble endeavor and our financial support is needed now more than ever.
Our worldwide cooperative campaign of polio eradication will prevail—and thousands of deaths from other diseases, such as measles and malaria, are being prevented by this model of cooperation spearheaded by Rotary. The Vitamin A supplementing by Rotary is boosting the immune systems of millions of children worldwide—and one official claims that it may have already saved the lives of three million children!
Ann Lee Hussey concluded by reminding us that, even with polio eradicated, there will be twelve to twenty million polio survivors in the world. Many will experience Post Polio Syndrome, with symptoms appearing decades later. Extreme fatigue and often pain return. Ann Lee has looked into the eyes of thousands of these children and adults across the globe and experienced their horrible suffering. They will need our help with treatment and rehabilitation for decades to come.
FDR, our president who personally was stricken by polio, once said, “Our ability to work together…will make our victory over polio endure.” He could have been speaking about Rotary International—for Rotary is the only non-governmental organization that could have raised one billion dollars and organized thousands of teams to immunize hundreds of millions of people in more than 200 nations. We as Rotarians can be very proud to have been both the catalyst and the indispensable ingredient, the leading force with thousands of followers, in the eradication of polio. Now is the time for us, mindful of what we have done, to redouble our commitment to support PolioPlus as generously as we can and, once and for all, to eliminate polio from the face of the earth.
