Polio: A Shameful Legacy

Mar 9th, 2010 4:56 PM UTC
By Mia Farrow

Make sure to check out this post from Mia Farrow (written exclusively for the ONE blog) about her recent visit to Chad with UNICEF to raise awareness about the importance of polio vaccines.

Last week I made my eleventh visit to Chad, one of the most compelling and impoverished countries in the world. Life is harsh for the people of Chad and it is especially precarious for the children. In the capitol of Ndjamena, I met four-year-old Clako Ali, who lives with her grandmother in one of Ndjamena’s teeming, squalid alleyways. The child has a smile I won’t forget. Her grandmother described a happy, active little girl who is smart; Clako would do well in school.

But last October, polio stalked the streets and alleyways of Ndjamena and found little Clako in their one room hut. Today her legs are withered and useless—without bracing and crutches she will never stand or walk.

Her grandmother worries about the future. How can Clako attend school, and as time passes, how will she assume a woman’s tasks—fetching water, wood, cooking, farming and caring for children. And anyway, what man would ever want to marry Clako Ali?

I was with UNICEF in a vaccination campaign to fight a disease I know too well. My own son, adopted from India, is paraplegic because of polio. When I first brought him home to the United States, it was hard to find a doctor who had any experience with polio because we have had the vaccine since 1955. Polio disappeared from the developed world and our consciousness decades ago.

Today, it exists only in the poorest countries on earth, because the world does not care enough about its most vulnerable children.

Polio is the shameful legacy of destitution and global indifference.

-Mia Farrow

TAGS: From Our Partners, Polio, UNICEF