Sierra Mountain Times

Rotarians Fight Polio in Africa Tom Telfer of Ontario, Canada, a partially hidden Alice Wood of Seaside, Oregon and I are greeted by kids as we start our polio immunization day in Benin.  

It was hot and humid and the water running off my head and down my back made the shirt I was wearing stick to my body. The pathway was rough and goats and children made a parade out of our walk through the village of Dedome in the Kpomasse section of Benin, West Africa. My companions, volunteers and the village midwife, chatted amiably in the local dialect and I was left alone with my thoughts. 

It was hot, the humidity was about 90 percent; I was tired and I was getting hungry. But, at that moment in time, I wouldn’t have been anywhere else, doing anything else. For the past several hours, we’d been going house to house administering polio vaccine to children and I was having the ‘time of my life’.

Since my first day as a Rotarian, in 1987, it has been a dream of mine to do immunization field work and in November of this year, 2009, I got that chance.

But, let me back up a little and explain why a Twain Harte Rotarian was in Dedome, toting an insulated box full of polio vaccine.

Are you old enough to remember what a scourge polio was here in the U.S.? If you are, you remember how our parents reacted when we, as children, complained of a headache, neck-ache or non-specific malaise. The first thought they had was, does my child have polio? 

 As children we all gave pennies to the March of Dimes to fight polio and we’d all seen pictures of little children with leg braces or in iron lungs trying to breath.

 

If you are not old enough to remember, then you were born after the seemingly miraculous discovery of the polio vaccine. The last outbreak in the U.S. occurred as late as 1979.

In 1985, Rotary International, the world’s first service club, declared that the whole world should be Polio free. In that year, 350,000 children in 125 countries contracted polio. Rotary launched an eradication effort called PolioPlus and individual Rotarians pledged to raise $120 million dollars for the effort and to organize teams of volunteers to administer the vaccine. 

Through October of this year, 2009, only 1,158 children, in four endemic countries, have contracted the disease. An additional 325 children in non-endemic countries have also been affected. The endemic countries are Nigeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan and India.

It was a pretty amazing thing for a service organization to suggest doing, but Rotary had a vision that the disease could be conquered; all it would take would be money and hard work. 

By 1988, Rotarians raised $247 million (twice the amount they had pledged) for the PolioPlus effort and, inspired in part by Rotary’s initiative, the World Health Assembly passed a resolution to eradicate polio. Partners now include the World Health Organization, the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and UNICEF.

As the number of cases of polio shrinks, there is yet one big push to see it ended for good. To that end the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has challenged Rotary to raise another $200 million dollars to which the foundation will add $355 million. The resulting $555 million will directly support immunization campaigns in developing countries, where polio continues to infect and paralyze children, robbing them of their futures and compounding the hardships faced by their families.

Rotarians haven’t just donated money to the effort. Since the beginning of the PolioPlus campaign, thousands of Rotarians have volunteered thousands of hours to immunize millions of kids around the world.

Over the years Twain Harte Rotarians have donated thousands of dollars to PolioPlus. My own dollars have gone into the effort, but I really wanted to do more. I’d always supported the program and been proud of what Rotary has accomplished, but I wanted to do some ‘hands on’ work. 

Now, here I was in Benin and I was a ‘happy camper’.

The trip started when I saw a flyer from Rotary which announced a forthcoming trip to West Africa organized by Brad Howard of Howard Tours in Oakland. Howard belongs to the Oakland Sunrise club where he is both a Past President and Past District Governor. He’d been to Africa eleven times and now was organizing another trip. 

Sign me up. But, first, where is Benin? I checked a map and found out it is a small country on the Bight or Bay of Benin sandwiched between Nigeria, Togo, Burkina Faso and Niger.

When I got the list of other Rotarians going on the venture, there was not one name that I recognized. OK, I thought, I can do this. Rotarians are easy to get to know.

 

During the immunization day we were accompanied by village volunteers Aline Hounejo, left, and Louis Kokan, right, and midwife Ruth Akinola. 

 

It turned out better than I expected. The group included 38 Rotarians from 32 different clubs in 21 districts in the U. S. and Canada. Eight friends or spouses came along as did one Rotary International Staff member. A Rotarian who is now in the Peace Corp., a Rotary scholar studying in Benin and an Incoming District Governor from Germany also joined in our group. It was an enthusiastic crowd of very tired people (most of us had been traveling for over 20 hours) which gathered the first night in Cotonou, Benin for a big welcome by our host clubs. 

There are 13 Rotary clubs in Cotonou and they each supported, fed and some of them accompanied us for the next seven days as we conducted the immunizations, viewed Rotary projects, attended a project fair and toured the city. These club members were some of the most gracious and welcoming people I’d ever met.

The next day we were given a tour of the city and then on day two we were loaded into a bus for our trip to the countryside where we would participate in this Sub National Immunization Day. Divided into four groups, we were dropped off in four different villages where we were assigned to teams of health care volunteers. 

The village center of Dedome was crowded with adults and kids when we arrived at our group’s destination. The kids were chatty and adorable, talking excitedly and clustering around us. Unfortunately, they spoke a local dialect or French, neither of which I have a working knowledge. Fortunately, their friendly smiles and infectious laughter made us all feel welcome. 

Our mission was to immunize every village child under the age of five and we fanned out to our appointed areas. The team I was assigned to showed me and the two accompanying Rotarians how to use the vaccine bottle and administer the drops. My teammates, Alice Wood of Seaside, Oregon and Tom Telfer of London, Ontario and I started walking to the far reaches of the village. We were accompanied by village volunteers Aline Hounejo and Louis Kokan and midwife Ruth Akinola. They would prove to be great company. Aline was there to assist in the vaccine administration, Louis to be our administrative person recorded each dose given and any problems we encountered. Ruth, as the midwife, knew most of the families and had delivered many of the babies. She was also our interpreter. 

Rotarian Tom Telfer of Ontario, Canada, gets two drops into the mouth of a young boy in Dedome. 

 

My first attempts at getting two vaccine drops quickly into the little mouths of babies were not perfect. I’d been told that with the younger kids it would be necessary to squeeze their little cheeks and just pop the drops into their mouths. Easier said than done and my first effort landed the drops on the child’s chin and chest. The vaccine bottle is only about 1 1/2 inches tall, maybe two inches with the dropper attached. The bottle seemed very small and my hands cumbersomely large, but I soon got the gist of it and it was pretty smooth sailing from then on. 

Each time we immunized a child we also used a semi-permanent marker to make a small mark on each child’s left pinkie finger so that anyone else coming along would know the child had been given the drops. 

We went house to house explaining to each mother, father or caretaker what we were about. In only two cases, did the responsible adult refuse to allow us to administer the vaccine. Our administration volunteer noted which households these were and the next day they were visited by the village elder and a ministry of health official who explained that the children must be immunized and it was accomplished. 

To completely immunize each child, the polio vaccine is administered several times, so many of the older children had seen other teams come through the village. But for the little ones there was no such memory and many were not happy to see us. More than once, when I was ready to ‘drop the drops’ the youngster started crying. I guess I’d cry, too, if some stranger tried to force something into my mouth. Once the vaccine was administered, however, the babies were smiling again. 

Twain Harte Rotarians donated a suitcase full of school supplies to the children of Benin. A representative of the Cotonou club, kneeling, and Past District Governor of District 9100, Robert Atta from Ghana, accept the donation. 

 

I would find out that afternoon, when the tally was complete, that our Rotarians had immunized 3,313 children that day. 

During a rest stop, as we sat on the front door stoop of a small home drinking from our bottles of water, a youngster sidled up to me and took my hand. She smiled a great smile and whispered something in my ear. I had no idea what she said, as she wouldn’t repeat it for the translator. It didn’t really matter. She was smiling as she showed me her marked finger and she stayed close to me for the remainder of our stop. I remember thinking that the day was just about perfect and this little girl, unclothed except for a band of beads encircling her waist and clutching a half-eaten mango, was much like any other three-year old I’d ever encountered. The sun was shining, she had a snack to munch on, she had the attention of an adult and, if her smile was any indication, she was happy. And so was I.  

Polio Facts: (1) 

• Polio only affects humans; there are no known animal reservoirs 

• An effective, inexpensive vaccine is available: Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) 

• Immunity is life long 

• There are no long term carriers 

• Polio virus can only survive for a very short time in the environment 

A Short Timeline, the History of Polio (2)

1580-1342 BC – An Egyptian stone pillar depicts a priest with a withered leg leaning on a staff, suggesting polio has existed for thousands of years. 

1916 – A polio epidemic in New York heightens concern on both sides of the Atlantic and accelerates research into how the disease is spread. 

1954 – Dr. Jonas Salk develops the first vaccine against polio, an injectable “killed” vaccine. 

1961 – Dr. Albert Sabin develops a “live” oral polio vaccine which rapidly becomes the vaccine of choice for most immunization programs in the world. 

1985 – Rotary International launches PolioPlus, the first and largest internationally coordinated private-sector support of a public health initiative. 

1988 – Global Polio Eradication Initiative by the World Health Assembly 

1994 – The Western Hemisphere is declared polio-free. 

1995 – Rotarians and other volunteers immunize 165 million children in China and India in a single week. 

1996 – The number of nations declared polio-free increases to 150. 

Nelson Mandela officially launches Kick Polio Out of Africa and players from the African Football Confederation participate in community public awareness campaigns across the continent. 

1997 – In India, 134 million children are immunized on a single day. 

2000 – The Western Pacific region, Australia to China, is declared polio-free. 

2003 – Rotary’s total contribution to polio eradication exceeds $500 million. 

2004 – Synchronized National Immunization Days in 23 countries target 80 million children. 

2006 – The number of polio-endemic countries drops to four, the lowest in human history. 

2009 - Rotary’s overall contribution to eradication efforts totals $800 million. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pledge $555 million – which includes Rotary’s $200 million Challenge- in support of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. 

(1) www.brown.edu 

(2) www.rotary.org – website used for supporting data and info.