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ASHLAND – A coalition of Rotary International Clubs in Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia has come together to challenge the Tri-State to join the international fight to “End Polio Now.”
In recognition of World Polio Day on Oct. 24, the group has organized a screening of the award-winning movie, “Breathe,” at the Paramount Arts Center in Ashland. The event will include an exhibition of iron lungs and the debut of a short film about local polio outbreaks and survivor stories.
“Breathe,” the true-life story of a polio survivor will be shown on the theater’s big screen Sunday, Oct. 28, at 3 p.m. The public is invited and encouraged to attend.
A ticket to the event is a $10 donation to Rotary International’s PolioPlus Fund. Tickets are on sale and available from Ashland, Barboursville, Ceredo-Kenova, Grayson, Huntington, Ironton, Louisa, Russell and Portsmouth Rotary Club members as well as at the PAC’s ticket office. Tickets will be available until just before showtime.
The movie “Breathe” was released in 2017 by Bleeker Street and produced by Jonathan Cavendish (“Bridget Jones’s Diary”). “Breathe” features actors Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy, and tells the story of Cavendish’s father, Robin Cavendish, who contracted polio at the age of 28. Robin Cavendish is paralyzed by the disease and told he has only months to live, but with the help of his wife, Diana, her family and the inventor Teddy Hall, Cavendish escapes from a hospital ward and devotes the rest of his life to helping fellow patients and the disabled.
Come to the PAC before the show to walk through an exhibit of adult and child Iron Lungs. The large machines were used to breathe for polio survivors whose paralyzed muscles could not perform the function. This was arranged through Rotary West Virginia District.
The history of local polio outbreaks and four survivor stories will also be highlighted at the event. Veteran local journalist Randy Yohe and his wife Vickie, owners of Brown Dog Productions and OurBoomLife.com, created a short film for the event. “Polio Survior Stories,” will make its debut at the event. It shares the story of four local survivors and features the Milton, W.V.a. Morris Memorial Hospital, where many local polio patients were treated.
All proceeds from the event will go to Rotary International’s PolioPlus Fund and will be matched 2:1 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has pledged $450 million to fight Polio over the three-year period of 2017-19. The foundation is the largest private funding source for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative and also provides technical support and invests in research. GPEI has estimates it needs $1.5 billion in funding to end polio.
Poliomyelitis, known simply as polio, is a highly infectious disease that mostly affects children under the age of five. Polio spreads through contaminated water and attacks the nervous system sometimes leading to paralysis and death. There is no cure for the disease but there is an effective vaccine, which all children must receive in order to protect them and end the disease globally.
Polio sickened tens of thousands of Americans until it was eradicated from the U.S. in 1979. In the more than 30 years since Rotary International launched its global fight to end polio more than 2.5 billion children have been vaccinated and cases of the disease have dropped 99.9 percent. In 1988 there were 350,000 children were sickened by the disease in 125 countries.
In 2018, a total of 20 cases of polio have been reported in the world. Only three countries, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria, wild polio-virus is endemic. A country must go three years without a case to be declared “polio free.”
As Rotary’s public awareness campaign suggests, the world really is “This Close” to eradicating a disease from the planet for just the second time in human history. But efforts must be sustained, if vaccines are ended an estimated 200,000 cases of polio could erupt within the next 10 years.
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