Polio

The dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is among a group of leading scientists that has joined an initiative to eradicate polio. Dr. Michael J. Klag signed a declaration last week endorsing a Polio Eradication Endgame Strategic Plan. It calls for creating a polio-free world by 2018. The initiative is led by Emory University and Aga Khan University. Officials say there is an opportunity to end polio because there are so few cases being reported. More than 400 other scientists from 80 countries signed the declaration, which calls for sustaining containment of the disease once it is eradicated.

Your health section recently noted that a Hopkins dean was among those who want to eradicate polio ("Hopkins dean joins effort to eradicate polio," April 21). I believe we all ascribe to that hope. My comment comes from the point of view of all the work and money spent over the last 30 years by the Rotary Foundation and it's 34,000 community-based service clubs to achieve just that. The fact is that Rotary International was the first organization to have the vision of a polio free world, and it has since contributed over $1 billion to eradicate polio - not to mention the thousands of Rotarians who have rolled up their sleeves to volunteer during National Immunization Days.

WASHINGTON -- Did polio make Franklin D. Roosevelt president of the United States? Or would he have become president, polio or no polio?These questions are being asked in the context of whether the grandiose new memorial to the nation's only four-term president, to be dedicated today, should depict him in a wheelchair as insisted upon by spokesmen for the disabled.They argue that had he not been stricken with infantile paralysis at the age of 39, Roosevelt, then largely seen as a frivolous young aristocrat, would never have developed the inner strength, dedication and compassion for the downtrodden that made it possible for him to climb to the White House.

The dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is among a group of leading scientists that has joined an initiative to eradicate polio. Dr. Michael J. Klag signed a declaration last week endorsing a Polio Eradication Endgame Strategic Plan. It calls for creating a polio-free world by 2018. The initiative is led by Emory University and Aga Khan University. Officials say there is an opportunity to end polio because there are so few cases being reported. More than 400 other scientists from 80 countries signed the declaration, which calls for sustaining containment of the disease once it is eradicated.

Well into the 1950s, polio was still the mysterious virus that had crippled President Franklin D. Roosevelt, killed thousands of other people and confined thousands more, mostly children, to coffinlike "iron lung" respirators. But 50 years ago this week, scientists announced that a much-anticipated polio vaccine developed by University of Pittsburgh researcher Jonas Salk was safe and effective. Within a week, the first truckloads of Salk's vaccine arrived in Baltimore and health officials began vaccinating 140,000 children across Maryland.

OUR COMMUNITY is filled with quiet heroes -- people who perform acts of service for others, seeking no praise for themselves.Some of the projects are small; others are more ambitious.Two of our neighbors have decided to concentrate their efforts on fighting polio.Polio is an infectious viral disease that causes paralysis and can lead to death. Its victims are mostly children younger than 3.The last case of polio in the Western Hemisphere was reported in Peru in 1994, according to Rotary International.

Janet Felde feels a connection to Cardinal Francis George, who's recovering from surgery for bladder cancer. Like Chicago's Roman Catholic archbishop, she's a polio survivor. George, 69, contracted polio at age 13; to this day, he wears a leg brace to support muscles ravaged by the viral illness. Felde, 58, caught the disease as an 11-month-old infant and has lived with its aftereffects since. "As a fellow survivor, I'd like the cardinal to know: `You're an amazing example to us all. And please, please, take care of yourself,'" said Felde of Downers Grove, Ill. Medical experts say it's advice worth heeding.

A photo on the front page of the Aug. 4 Perspective section was missing a credit. The photo of a Franklin Delano Roosevelt memorial should have been credited to Diane W. Blanks.The Sun regrets the error.The arguing continues on whether the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial park in Washington should contain a statue of FDR in a wheelchair. The National Organization on Disability and some other groups and individuals want one, contending that his disability was central to his life. The FDR Memorial Commission says "no," on the grounds that FDR went to great lengths to hide his polio-induced inability to stand or walk unaided and that desire should be honored.

An outbreak of polio in recent weeks in the southern African nation of Namibia, which had been free of the disease for a decade, is highly unusual because the disease is striking and killing adults, according to the World Health Organization. The fast-moving outbreak has killed seven Namibians and paralyzed 33 more, and panicked citizens have deluged hospitals seeking immunization against polio. But there was very little vaccine in the country - only enough for routine vaccination of infants - so supplies quickly ran out and people were turned away.

WASHINGTON -- Polio, the dreaded scourge that killed or paralyzed millions of children worldwide and caused near-hysteria among U.S. parents during the first half of the century, has been eradicated from the Western Hemisphere, the World Health Organization declared yesterday.This achievement "should be a source of pride to all of us, and it shows what can be done when everybody works together for a common cause for the benefit of mankind," said Dr. Carlyle Guerra de Macedo, director of the Pan American Health Organization, or PAHO, which is the Western Hemisphere office of WHO."

Is it any wonder America is distrusted and held in contempt around the world? I was unaware my tax dollars were paying for fake polio vaccination programs in Pakistan (and no doubt elsewhere). What a dreadful way to "win the hearts and minds" of a population ("A tainted polio program," Jan. 7). A further affront to conservative societies is the manner in which our culture promotes out-of-wedlock pregnancies and adulterous entanglements like Kim Kardashian and her boyfriend Kanye West ("Kim and Kanye, the latest to put marriage last," Jan. 7)

The news that the Central Intelligence Agency had been running a fake vaccination program in Pakistan first surfaced in 2011 and quickly ignited fears that the covert operation could compromise the global campaign to eradicate polio. Late last month, a handful of vaccine workers, including a teenage girl, paid the price for the CIA's deceit: They were gunned down as they tried to give the polio vaccine to children living in the Pakistani city of Karachi and other areas. No one has taken responsibility for the attacks, although the Pakistani Taliban has threatened vaccine workers in the past.

What people go through to live their lives — war and terror, disease and pain, poverty and hunger, long journeys across continents and oceans, loss and heartbreak — always leaves me awed and humbled. You hear a story, like the one I'm offering this Christmas, and you want to raise a glass to that thing we call human spirit. Milla Dawt Hniang, who travels with crutches and guitar, has it in bunches. It has taken her 20 years past the age when her parents thought she would die. She's a Burmese-born singer-songwriter about to release her first CD and send more music of the American country-pop variety — think Taylor Swift — into the world.

For nearly 50 years, the names of Frank and Mary Ellen Gunther have been synonymous with Baltimore philanthropy and voluntarism. They sat on numerous boards and led fundraising efforts for religious, educational, cultural, medical and political organizations. They were the first husband-and-wife team to head a United Way campaign in 1976. And over five decades, they have probably digested more rubber chicken dinners at fundraising functions than any presidential candidate. "We decided when we turned 70: No more boards," said Mary Ellen Gunther from her Ocean City home, where the couple has lived full time since giving up their Guilford home in 2002.

Sometimes, good policy is a question of good timing. The human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine - which Texas required for its sixth-grade girls last week, and which state legislatures around the country, including Maryland's, have been considering - is a good case in point. By all accounts, the new vaccine against cervical cancer, developed by Merck Co., can provide an important advance in health. In scientific trials, it proved 100 percent effective in preventing infections with the two types of HPV that cause 70 percent of the 3,500 deaths by cervical cancer in this country every year.

Janet Felde feels a connection to Cardinal Francis George, who's recovering from surgery for bladder cancer. Like Chicago's Roman Catholic archbishop, she's a polio survivor. George, 69, contracted polio at age 13; to this day, he wears a leg brace to support muscles ravaged by the viral illness. Felde, 58, caught the disease as an 11-month-old infant and has lived with its aftereffects since. "As a fellow survivor, I'd like the cardinal to know: `You're an amazing example to us all. And please, please, take care of yourself,'" said Felde of Downers Grove, Ill. Medical experts say it's advice worth heeding.

Howard Marshall Nickelson wasn't stopped by the polio that struck him when he was 17: The Anne Arundel County civil rights activist and retired federal official ran his life from a wheelchair and traveled where he wished. Mr. Nickelson, who died of pulmonary failure Jan. 9 at his longtime Pasadena home at age 66, won dozens of awards and tributes -- both on the job and in his work for civil rights. Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and raised in New York City, Mr. Nickelson was a 6-foot-2-inch scholar-athlete when polio struck in 1948 -- immobilizing him from shoulder to toe. He earned his bachelor's degree from Brooklyn College and went to work in the Patchogue district office of the Social Security Administration on Long Island.

Polio has spread to two more African countries that had been free of the crippling disease and threatens to become a major epidemic across west and central Africa, the World Health Organization said yesterday. The disease begins reaching its high season next month. The spread of polio to Guinea and Mali brings to 12 the number of previously polio-free African countries that have experienced an outbreak of the disease since January 2003. The spread deals a serious setback to the agency's efforts to eradicate the disease by year's end, a goal also hampered by a funding gap of $100 million.

An outbreak of polio in recent weeks in the southern African nation of Namibia, which had been free of the disease for a decade, is highly unusual because the disease is striking and killing adults, according to the World Health Organization. The fast-moving outbreak has killed seven Namibians and paralyzed 33 more, and panicked citizens have deluged hospitals seeking immunization against polio. But there was very little vaccine in the country - only enough for routine vaccination of infants - so supplies quickly ran out and people were turned away.