The Wallaceburg Rotary Club welcomed a speaker last month, who was presenting in Canada for the first time.
Ginger Barrons, of the Novi Rotary Club in Michigan, spoke about polio eradication to the Wallaceburg crowd, a mission that is one of the main priorities for Rotary International.
Sussan Londry, the president of the Wallaceburg club, introduced Barrons, who has been heavily involved with Rotary since 1989.
Barrons discussed some of the background about polio, which was described in details in this Rotary International video:
“It tells you about the 1952 era when polio was at epidemic proportions in North America and certainly in the town where I lived, polio was very rampant there,” Barrons said.
“We’ve kind of forgotten what that was like, but everyone was afraid.”
Barrons said back in the 1950’s mothers generally didn’t work then.
“It was the mothers’ job to keep their families safe and the way that they did that was by not taking them to the theatre, not taking them to the pool, maybe not even going to church. Whenever polio came in the summertime… everyone was very, very frightened. It was a very scary time.”
Barrons said these issues are still occurring in other parts of the world, including in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
This is why, she said, it is important to continue telling their stories.
“Polio has been gone in the United States, and from most of Canada too I believe, since about 1979,” she said.
During her presentation in Wallaceburg, Barrons also discussed her personal experience with polio, as her brother-in-law battled polio in his teens and later battled post-polio syndrome in his 50’s.
For more details about Rotary Internationals fight to eradicate polio worldwide, click here.
