Ross And His Polio Experience
Today we had a very special presentaton with a very special speaker. Our President, Ross Harris, has an intimate relationship with the disease Polio. He contracted the virus at age six and understands very well the awful outcomes it can bring. Ross is a very positive person, and feels himself lucky that any disabilities that resulted from his illness have not prevented him from enjoying his life to the fullest, including having a career and a family that now includes grandchildren. Many polio sufferers were not so lucky. Ross’s leg and arm were affected by this paralysis-causing infection – thankfully his lungs and other major body parts were not.
Today, polio has been eradicated in nearly all parts of the world, with new cases being reported only in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria. This is entirely due to the worldwide vaccination program begun in 1988 and led by the World Health Organization UNICEF and the Rotary Foundation. Jonas Salk was the first scientist to develop a vaccine, which was an injection. Later, Albert Sabin developed an oral vaccine, where two or three drops of the vaccine are simply dropped onto a person’s tongue, and provides life long antibodies against the polio virus. This makes the vaccination program easy and cheap to administer worldwide.
Ross emphasized the need to continue with this important program. There is no cure for polio once it is contracted. If you want to help fund this program, you can find out more about it at http://www.endpolio.org/