Scott Boucher, our guest speaker, gave a factual and powerful presentation about Polio Plus. One of Scott's greatest passions is Rotary's Polio Plus initiative to eradicate polio worldwide. Some of the Facts presented are as follows:
Polio mainly affects children under age 5.
There is no cure, but polio is preventable with a vaccine.
1 in 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis.
Among those paralyzed, 5% to 10% die when their breathing muscles become immobilized.
We’ve reduced cases by 99.9% since 1988. In 1988 there were over 350,000 cases of polio.
Rotarians have helped to immunize more than 3 billion children in 122 countries.
We must continue our efforts to eradicate this preventable and crippling disease.
The photo shows an iron lung machine that saved the lives of thousands of polio patients by artificially forcing their paralysed chest muscles to breathe. Some patients needed the machine for a couple of weeks until their bodies fought off the polio virus, while others had to rely on the machine for decades.