This month would have marked the two-year anniversary of Nigeria being polio free, however the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) both confirmed two new cases. In separate statements, the organizations confirmed that both cases involved children located in the northern Borno state of Africa and resulted […]

Folk singer Donovan Leitch of “Mellow Yellow” fame admits that he’s had a charmed life, but he wonders what it would’ve been like if he hadn’t been diagnosed with polio as a child. “I spent a lot of time in bed after having polio while my dad read poetry to me,” said Leitch, who’s now […]

In Karachi, Pakistan, female health workers have taken the lead in the fight to end polio. Despite local resistance, and even coming under attack in some instances, these women continue to go door to door administering the life-saving polio vaccine to area children and educating parents who resist treatment for their children. Due to Pakistani […]

As a child, Georgina Mamba didn’t fit in with the other students at her school in Lusaka, Zambia, after polio left her a paraplegic. As she got older and her parents could no longer care for her, they sent her away to a boarding school that turned out to be an orphanage for children with […]

In an article in the February issue of National Geographic entitled, “Cell Coverage: Reaching Pakistan’s Children with the Polio Vaccine,” author Aziz Memon covered Rotary International’s work to switch from paper recordkeeping to digital in the battle against polio in Pakistan. The team in charge of this massive undertaking is primarily comprised of women, so […]

An estimated 1.8 million children under the age of five we expected to receive the polio vaccine during a three-day immunization drive in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a province in Pakistan, earlier this week. Thousands of polio workers descended on the area and narrowed their focus down to eight high-risk districts within the province where polio is […]

Muhammadu Buhari, president of Nigeria, lauded his country for being polio free for the past two years. In a series of tweets sent out on Twitter earlier this week, President Buhari said that, in 2015, the African nation was removed from the list of countries where polio was endemic, and he outlined the next steps […]

Fayaz Jatoi, the newly appointed coordinator of the provincial Emergency Operation Center (EOC) for polio, posed this question during an orientation session attended by fellow deputy commissioners in Karachi on Monday. The objective of the session was to share basic facts on polio eradication; clarify roles of district polio control rooms; and identify ways to […]

The crisis in Yemen has taken a large toll on its citizenry, especially the country’s children. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates that 320,000 children are facing severe malnutrition, while 2.2 million are desperately in need of humanitarian aid to prevent their health from deteriorating. Yemen’s Health and Population Project (YHPP) has been working […]

In an essay, Irishwoman Eva Kelly recalls her childhood growing up in Cork, Ireland during the 1950s and the struggles she and her community faced during a polio outbreak. In 1956, her parents moved her to Kilkenny for safety, but when she returned a year later, she found that many of her classmates had contracted […]