Polio still a problem

Press, 26 November 1987, Page 42

Polio still a problem

The introduction of the Salk vaccine for , poliomyelitis in 1955, followed by the Sabin vaccine in 1960 virtually eliminated polio in the developed world. In underdeveloped nations this highly contagious viral disease continues to devastate families and communities as it has for generations. The grim statistics at present still mean that daily 75 children in the world die of this disease.

Their suffering is ended while the 250,000 children who survive as cripples each year face a grim future in nations where welfare schemes are virtually nonexistent. World Health Organisation figures suggest that a reliable estimate of threefifths of the 100 million

children born in developing nations each year are not immunised against polio.

The terrible irony for polio victims is that a single dose of polio vaccine costs approximately four United States cents. It only takes between three and six doses to fully immunise a child against polio.

This costs as little as USI2 cents. *

Polio is only one of the major scourges of world children the Rotary Polioplus program aims to eradicate by 2005. Each year 3,450,000 children in the developing world die and an equal number are mentally or physically disabled by polio and the five other diseases that could be prevented by immunisation.

In many developing nations the vaccines to prevent these diseases reach fewer than one in five children.

Since 1955, an estimated 106,850,000 childhood deaths have resulted from vaccine-preventable diseases.