Almost There

SooNews Wire for SooNews.ca
Thursday, September 25, 2008, 2:41PM

Ramesh Ferris has been hand cycling across Canada since April 12 to raise funds and awareness about polio - a disease that so many Canadians have forgotten.

His Cycle to Walk campaign cycletowalk.com has raised nearly $300,000 since then. The campaign will wrap up at Cape Spear, Nfld on October 1, and a reception at City Hall will take place at 1:30 that same day.

Ramesh Ferris was in Sault Ste. Marie this past summer and took part in the Rotary Community Day Parade.

Ramesh's legs were paralyzed by polio in India when he was six months old. A vaccine had existed for 25 years before that.

Now, Ramesh is 28. He's lived in Canada since he was two, and he's received all the braces, crutches and surgeries he's needed to become mobile. His legs are still paralyzed though. And polio is still preventable.

Ramesh has spoken at schools and community halls, and has met with officials from all levels of government of the course of his campaign, including the prime minister and the leader of the opposition.

Canada had some of the world's highest polio rates in the 1950s. It is history's greatest cause of disability. Currently 11 per cent of Canadians have not been vaccinated. Polio returned to Australia in July 2007. It could just as easily happen here.

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative polioeradication.org is history's largest-ever public health initiative. Since 1988, the GPEI has worked to lower world polio rates by 99 per cent.

Polio is incredibly contagious, but it requires a human carrier. The only way to stop it is through preventative vaccine. A lax in vaccinations in Nigeria in 2004 resulted in polio rates increasing by over 200 per cent.

The GPEI has had difficulty securing funding as of late. The funds Cycle to Walk raises will go towards the GPEI.

Dr. Bruce Aylward, the GPEI's current director, is a Newfoundlander.

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