Call for survivors to tell their story 60yrs after polio outbreak

Special event planned to mark Ulster’s biggest ever epidemic

ORGANISERS of an event to mark the 60th anniversary of a polio outbreak are searching for survivors of the disease to tell their stories.

Almost 300 people in Belfast contracted the condition making it the biggest epidemic in Northern Ireland’s history.

Rotary International and the One Last Push Campaign are planning on bringing together those whose lives were impacted for a special event at Belfast Castle on Tuesday.

Rosemary Simpson, president of the city’s Rotary Club, said: “We have already been in contact with residents who contracted polio during the 1940s and 50s, when the disease affected so many families in the city and across the province.

“We hope the event will bring together those living with the long-term effects of the disease, as well as remembering the heroic efforts of all who were affected or connected with the epidemic.”

Retired civil servant Eddie Mccrory was five when he contracted polio in 1957. He said: “My daddy promised I would only be in the hospital for a night. In fact, I was kept in the isolation ward for a further six weeks – and then transferred to Greenisland Orthopaedic Hospital where I stayed for nearly a year.”

Eddie was to be treated as an outpatient every three months for a further six years at Templemore Avenue Hospital and wore calipers until he was 10.

He added: “At that point, the doctors thought I was going to be fine.

“But when I was 13, I had an adolescent growth spurt and it turned out that polio’s lasting impact on me would be a sclerosis – a curvature of the spine.”

Up until the 1980s, polio was still paralysing children in the UK and there are more than 120,000 men and women suffering from its after-effects.

It is now only endemic in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria but more still needs to be done to eradicate the disease completely.

Mrs Simpson said: “The UK has long been a leader in polio eradication and the recent commitment of UK Aid to immunise up to 45 million children against the disease each year until 2020 will save more than 65,000 children from paralysis every year.

“Polio is just as cruel now as it was then. The difference is, today we can do more than just prevent it. We can end it.”

We hope the event will remember heroic efforts of all those affected ROSEMARY SIMPSON ROTARY CLUB PRESIDENT

NEVER FORGET Survivor Eddie Mccrory and Rosemary Simpson

HORRIFIC Polio could cause dreadful injuries