Ron Seymour
It was a difficult childhood for her, after contracting the wasting disease in her left leg as a toddler in 1953. She had nine operations before she was 12, and lived with a succession of braces and casts.
"I went on to live a perfectly normal life," Naumann said Sunday. "By my teen years and into my 20s, I‘d put polio completely in the past."
With widespread vaccinations beginning in the mid-1950s, many people, including Naumann, believed polio was on the way to complete eradication.
"I though it was gone for good," she said. "It‘s only been the last few years I‘ve been speaking out about my experience , because the truth is polio isn‘t eradicated, and even here in Canada we could be only one plane ride away from seeing another outbreak of the disease."
Naumann and other local Rotarians are in the last week of a month long drive to raise funds to ensure that enough polio vaccine is made available worldwide to eliminate the disease.
An iron lung, which was used by Okanagan polio patients in the late 1940s and ‘50s will be on display this week at Roy‘s Shoe Shop, 1627 Ellis Street in downtown Kelowna.
The gruesome historical oddity made shop owner Jim Belshaw cringe the first time he saw one. "I couldn‘t fathom what it would have been like for people with people to live in one of these, for months or even years," Belshaw said. "It‘s just unbelievable."
By displaying the iron lung for a week in his window, Belshaw hopes to raise at least $3,000 from customers and passers-by towards the End Polio Now campaign.
Naumann says she‘s worried that recent stats show only 87 per cent of Canadians are vaccinated against polio. Some parents prevent their children from receiving the vaccine, in what Naumann says is the wrong belief it causes autism.
"The World Health Organization says a population should be at least 90 per cent vaccinated to prevent an outbreak of polio," Naumann says. "If we keep dropping below that level, Canadians could be at risk again from polio."
On the web, www.rotary.org/endpolio
FOR MORE INFO CONTACT:
Jim Belshaw
Roy’s Shoes Boots and Repair
1627 Ellis Street, Kelowna, V1Y2A8
250-763-5696
http://roysshoes.com/
