Polio – forgotten but not gone

Consequence of polio - too many children must suffer a similar fate

For centuries polio has maimed and killed children across the world. Like all diseases it struck out at all echelons of society, from Presidents down, but it disproportionately affected the poor.

The virus transmits because of insanitary and unhygienic conditions. It is spread in faeces, infecting a victim with their food or water. It shreds the nervous system, attacking motor-neurons, paralysing the victim.

Polio kills the poorest and most marginalised of the world’s population. Those who do not drink clean water; who cannot wash their hands; those who are compelled to live in filth bereft of sanitation.

It is grievously unfair that children still suffer from this disease. This pathogen that only infects humans, that does not live long outside of its human host, that we have had a vaccine to combat for nearly 60 years.

Up to 90 per cent of those infected show no symptoms. This virus passes by so many; silently passing through en route to those few to destroy their fragile bodies.