- By d’Arcy Lunn, “Resident Nomad” for the Global Poverty Project’s The End of Polio campaign
I got swept up into the world of polio eradication almost exactly two years ago, when one of my colleagues at the Global Poverty Project said they wanted someone to work with a famous Indian former cricketer on polio advocacy for the Australian summer of 2011/12.
To be very honest all I heard from that conversation was ‘cricket’, ‘summer’ and ‘cricket’.
Although I had been working in aid and development for over 10 years, after accepting the exciting cricket gig, I had to stop for a moment and think , ‘hang on, what’s polio?’
As someone who was born six years after the last case of polio in Australia (which was in 1972), I’d never had a reason to know anything much about the disease. I had a vague recollection of something called an iron lung, something to do with Rotary, and had seen people in the streets of developing countries pushing themselves around on the ground with bits of rubber car tire padding their hands and knees.
But what I did know deep down inside was that polio represented global injustice and inequality – something I have always been passionate about trying to address. I mean, how could it be that the country I was born into had been polio-free for 40 years, yet there are still children today being paralysed by this easily preventable disease?
So since November 2011 I have happily dedicated my life to advocating for the global eradication of polio. It certainly hasn’t been a selfless journey, as it has given me the opportunity to meet some incredible people. My polio (advocacy) journey has taken me from Australia to the US, Canada, Pakistan, India, Aotearoa New Zealand, Brunei and currently Uganda, where I am working with UNICEF on the Stop Transmission of Polio (STOP) program.
I have met cricketers (as was my first hope), including becoming close friends with that famous former Indian cricketer and polio survivor, Bhagwath Chandrasekhar (above, with former Australian Prime Minister and fellow cricket fan, John Howard). I have had the absolute privilege of learning and working with polio survivors, Rotarians, government ministers, UNICEF, WHO, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and many, many others. I have tapped into their passion and dedication and become a part of the amazing global movement that is working to see a polio-free world.
There is so much good in the way these diverse people and organisations have come together to create a better future for children everywhere.
The bad is also there, as with the major polio outbreak we are currently seeing in the Horn of Africa which, so far this year, has affected more than 180 children.
Meanwhile the ugly certainly became apparent soon after I had left Pakistan. Nine vaccinators were killed in December last year, and then an unbelievably generous man I met in the slums of Karachi, was murdered in the middle of this year. This true hero, Waheed, had been providing not only polio immunisation for his community, but also education, clean water, sanitation and a food program.
But of all I have seen in polio eradication over the past two years, what stands out the most is the inspirational.
I don’t have the time or space to mention all of the incredible frontline polio workers out there who are the real heroes of this initiative. These are the men and women, like Waheed, like Denish, who are doing all they can to protect children against polio: travelling long distances, working through the heat of the day and even dodging bullets to create a better future for children in their community.
While I know that polio eradication is just one of many important things in the world that needs to be addressed, and I would never have guessed that it was something I would spend two years working on, it shows just what is possible in the broader effort to overcome injustice and inequality in this world.
Ending polio is not just about eradicating a disease, but building a platform for better community health and opportunity for everyone, everywhere and forever.
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If you want to take action to see the end of polio, please send an email to Australia's Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, and Senator Brett Mason, calling on the Australian Government to stand by their commitment to polio eradication.
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PS. A huge heartfelt thank you to those who have enriched me in this journey – sorry it is general, but it is a very big thank you…
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