When Miki Boleen sees new parents in her doctor’s office, she often asks them if they’ve vaccinated their child against polio, a disease that has crippled her.
Her desire is not to scare, but with declining vaccination rates among babies and toddlers due to missed routine vaccinations at the start of the pandemic, she hopes her story will help others stay safe. healthy. Boleen, 83, suggests people talk to their doctor – and others who have had infectious diseases that can be prevented with vaccines.
Its message is simple: why not consider vaccination and prevent a serious preventable disease?
“Please, please get your kids vaccinated,” the Abbotsford, B.C. resident said in a conversation with radio show host Dr. Brian Goldman. from CBC. White Coat, Black Art. “You don’t want them to end up like me.”
These conversations are taking place as public health experts warn that polio could resurface, following its spread in the United States and Great Britain. In New York State this summer, a young man suffered from paralysis after infection with polio, the first case in the United States in nearly a decade.
This week doctors and scientists highlighted these developments as well as outbreaks in Malawi and Mozambique and how the unprecedented situation pakistan floods could disrupt polio vaccination by delivering a Urgent call achieve a polio-free world.
In the 1990s, mass vaccination campaigns that began in Canada in 1955 largely eradicated polio here. Before that, thousands of children were infected.
Boleen first had polio when he was eight years old in Gladstone, Manitoba, about 160 kilometers west of Winnipeg. Initially, the only adverse effect was not being able to run fast.
Then Boleen was infected again with another strain during the 1953 epidemic. Winnipeg was the epicenter, with more than 2,300 cases out of nearly 9,000 nationwide, including 500 deaths that year.
A headache turned into an ambulance ride for the 14-year-old when she became unable to walk, coupled with a fear of dying.
In the pediatric ward of the hospital, other people with polio were lying in beds next to her. All the beds were so close together that if the children had any mobility at the time, they could have rolled onto another bed, she said.
“Sometimes during the night I would hear noises and wake up,” Boleen recalls. “Well, I couldn’t move and my voice was just a whisper at the time, but I knew what was going on. I either heard a ventilator go off during the night or saw the staff come in and drag someone away from the bed next to me. And you knew they were dead.
In the morning, the children were told that the patient had been moved. As an elder in the service, Boleen knew what really happened.
She says she is still traumatized by the deaths she has witnessed.
Polio can still strike
Boleen was hospitalized for nine months, followed by surgery and a full brace to help her walk again.
She threw away braces and crutches before starting training at 16 to become a psychiatric nurse. Although she enjoyed her career, symptoms of post-polio syndrome appeared in 1986 and she retired early.
Black Art White Coat26:30The return of poliomyelitis threatens Canadians
Polio is making a comeback around the world, and declining vaccination rates in Canada are leaving us vulnerable to a disease that was once on the verge of eradication. Miki Boleen, an 83-year-old polio survivor, has made it her mission to urge parents to immunize their infants as routine immunization rates plummet.
Learning this summer of a case of paralyzing poliomyelitis in an adult of New York the state upset Boleen, she said, but she expected it because of declining vaccination rates. About 40% of two-year-olds were not up to date with their vaccines in his region of British Columbia
Canada’s polio vaccination target is 90%, but several provinces and territories fall below this objective, including 88% in British Columbia and 86% in Manitoba.
Vaccination decline must be reversed: public health
Dr. Jia Hu is CEO of 19 To Zero, a nonprofit coalition of medical and other experts who facilitate vaccination. Their efforts include campaigns for parents of babies and preschoolers who missed polio and other vaccinations when family practices closed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hu’s team conducted a series of investigations suggesting vaccination coverage dropped from 70% to less than 1% among school-aged children receiving the HPV vaccine, which protects against cancers that still kill an estimated 400 Canadians every year.
When it comes to vaccinations for babies and preschoolers that protect against polio and measles, the drop was about 25 percent, said Hu, who is also a public health specialist and family doctor. . Before the pandemic, a 5% decline would be considered massive and concerning, he noted.
“The main reason for all these declines was actually due to reduced access,” Hu said, especially to family doctors and nurse practitioners during the pandemic.
“There is a total crisis in primary care,” Hu said. “What we need is primary care to be supported to provide vaccinations.”
The overall approach to ensuring Canadians catch up on their vaccinations should include pharmacists, just as they helped roll out COVID-19 vaccines for adults, he said, as well as online registries to report people refill them. are necessary.
Understanding and Awareness
Hu was the Medical Officer of Health during a Covid-19 outbreak at a Cargill meat processing plant in High River, Alberta, where his team helped hold town hall meetings, translate materials and set up vaccination clinics where community leaders encouraged residents to come forward .
“We started a pretty big vaccination campaign in rural northern Alberta,” Hu recalled.
To succeed, Hu said he used surveys and focus groups to understand why COVID-19 vaccination rates among rural residents were lagging behind city dwellers, followed by TV commercials, billboards and social media campaigns. Similar outreach could also boost other types of routine immunization rates, he said.
Dr. Zulfiqar Bhutta, Chair of Global Childhood Policy at the Center for Global Child Health at Sick Kids in Toronto, also says understanding what drives a community’s concerns about vaccination is key to encouraging ‘adoption. He works in two countries where the wild poliovirus is still circulating: Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Bhutta said polio will not be eradicated until it is under control everywhere. To promote immunization in Pakistan, Bhutta talks to parents about their family’s unmet needs, such as hunger and reproductive care. The team strives to provide these services alongside vaccines.
Doctors and public health nurses often say that vaccines are victims of their own success, because we don’t see the illnesses and deaths they have prevented. But they only work when enough of the population is protected.
“I often tell people what we see in lower-middle-income countries, we see in pockets of deprivation in high-income countries,” said Bhutta, who also works at the Institute for Global Health and development of the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan.
Bhutta said vaccine hesitancy anywhere can be tempered by reaching the most vulnerable people and maximizing uptake.
In Canada, Boleen channels his disappointment at falling vaccination rates into his speeches in support of the work of March of Dimes with post-polio survivorsas well as conversations for young adults to learn how harmful polio can be.
“Believe me, if I could have been vaccinated, I wouldn’t have had polio twice and I would still be dancing,” Boleen said. “That’s what I miss the most.”