Rotary Club Hosting Fundraiser to Eradicate Polio

THE WOODLANDS, Texas -- On Thursday, May 20 at Market Street from 4 p.m.-10 p.m., Rotary Club of The Woodlands’ members will be sporting purple shirts and collecting donations for polio eradication in an iron lung they will have on display.

For each donation, the donor’s Pinkie will be marked with purple ink. When children are being immunized in third world countries, the pinkie finger is marked purple to indicate that that child has received the vaccine. It’s a fun reminder of how we are helping make those purple pinkies possible!

Today polio exists in 4 countries: Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and Nigeria (PAIN). Through a challenge grant from the Gates Foundation, the Rotary will raise $200 million and the Foundation will match it. So far, Rotary has raised $122.4 million as of May 7, 2010.

About Polio
Polio, or more properly poliomyelitis, was one of the most feared and studied diseases of the first half of the 20th Century. Though the Salk--and later the Sabin--vaccines have essentially eliminated the disease in developed countries, many mysteries remain regarding polio.

Polio is a viral illness that produces no symptoms in 95% of cases. In 4-8% of cases, the illness appears as a mild form with flu-like symptoms, sore throat, and respiratory infection. A more serious form is associated with aseptic meningitis--with sensitivity to light and neck stiffness. The most severe case causes muscle paralysis and can even result in death.

Polio is usually transmitted by ingesting material contaminated with human waste. Drinking contaminated water and not washing hands are common culprits, making the eradication of polio in poor countries extremely difficult.

In the US, it’s recommended for children to have 4 doses of inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) between the ages of 2 months and 6 years.

In the height of the polio epidemic, the standard treatment involved placing a patient with a paralysis of the breathing muscles in an “iron lung”--large machine that actually pushed and pulled the chest muscles to make them work. The damaged limbs were often kept immobilized because of confinement to the iron lung. Where polio still exists, ventilators and some iron lungs are still in use today.

In 1988, there were 355,000 cases of polio in 125 countries. In 2009, there were fewer than 400 cases worldwide!

For more information, please contact Kay Hohman, The Woodlands Rotary Club.