February 4, 2004

Medical mission trip

Local Rotarians travel to India in effort to stamp out polio disease

By Carol South
Herald contributing writer

       For people of a certain age, born a generation or two ago, polio is more than one of a list of childhood vaccinations.
      It is a crippling and deadly disease that struck in their communities.
      Now extinct in all but six countries worldwide, 17 area Rotarians are traveling to India later this month to help stamp out vestiges of polio there. They are members of the Rotary Clubs in Traverse City, Elk Rapids and Petoskey, accompanied by a handful of family members.
      The polio vaccination effort is part of a worldwide effort by Rotary International that began in the mid-1980s with a goal of ending this disease forever. Rotary Club members from around the world have raised more than $3 billion dollars of private money for this campaign.
      Rotary International is working to complete the eradication by next year, which is the 100th anniversary of the international service club's founding. Rotary International has partnered with the World Health Organization, the United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention and UNICEF for this mission.
      "It's historic because unlike going overseas for most any other type of human reason, this is a global campaign to wipe out a disease that has been plaguing humanity for a very long time," said Norm Veliquette, an Elk Rapids resident. "It has been crippling and killing children and if we get this job done, it's done period. It's not like building houses, where there's always another house to build."
      During their two-week stay in India, one week will be dedicated to the polio campaign and one week to sightseeing.
      Once in India, the local Rotary Club members will join with other Rotarians from around the United States and Canada and fan out into Indian communities. With the help of Rotarians from India as well as local health officials, they will dispense the liquid vaccine to children who have not been vaccinated. If necessary, they will go door to door to find unvaccinated youngsters.
      "India is not the United States, not North America," Veliquette said. "There's a billion, a billion and a half people there and a lot of poor communities. Imagine the difficulty of maintaining an infrastructure of a health system and health care delivery, it is not like it is here."
      Veliquette is a veteran of two other Rotary-sponsored ventures, one to India in 2000 and one to Nigeria in 2002. He wrote a book about each of these endeavors, the first book entitled, "Fulfilling Our Promise: Rotarians Volunteer in Gujarat, India." A businessman and member of the Rotary Club of Elk Rapids for years, he remembers when polio was a vivid threat in the United States.
      "A lot of the people who went into the iron lungs died in them because if the polio virus paralyzes the muscles that affect breathing the victim dies," he said. "There's hardly anyone under the of 60 who can remember knowing someone who had polio. Because in the late 50s and early 60s we stopped the disease here."
      Wes Nelson, a member of the Rotary Club of Traverse City for 18 years, is pleased to participate in this cause. While he has previously traveled to Japan, Spain and Hong Kong as tourist, this will be his first service mission overseas. He is eager to contribute to the cause of ending polio and will be accompanied on the trip by his son, Darryl.
      "There comes a point where you feel like there's so much you'd like to do," he said, acknowledging Rotary International's organized efforts to help poor communities. "American money goes so far and we've had so many different projects, like for $60 a year we can put a kid in Bali in school, buy him uniforms, books and food - for a year."
      Nelson and his son will also stop in Nepal to visit a water project funded and implemented by Rotarians. This project benefits women in this community the most, he said.
      "Most of the world does not drink clean water," Nelson said. "In Nepal, women's literacy rate was zero, their job was to haul water so they couldn't go to school. When we provided water, the girls didn't have to haul it so they could go to school."
      Nelson pointed to the beneficial ripple effect of this change.
      "The girls and women could then help with the economic improvement of their family," he said. "It changes so much, but it all starts with water."