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Thursday, 22 September 2011

Michael Sheldrick was born 30 years after the last serious polio endemics swept across Australia and 16 years since the last reported case.

But it has not deterred the energetic Law student from campaigning to eradicate the disease in the rest of the world.

A polio vaccine, developed in the 1950s, wiped out the crippling disease in most countries but it is still endemic in four nations, three of them members of the Commonwealth.

Michael, a long-term justice fighter against global poverty, has been campaigning to get polio on the CHOGM agenda. He wrote to the Prime Minister Julia Gillard earlier this year and she agreed to meet him in Fremantle in March.

"We spent 15 minutes together," Michael said. "She was impressed with our campaign and, in July, she wrote saying that at CHOGM 2011 the Government would work to encourage Commonwealth members in their commitments to the World Health Organisation (WHO), including through the Global Polio Eradication Initiative."

The End of Polio campaign is a grassroots campaign co-ordinated by the Global Poverty Project, in support of the efforts of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) by Rotary International, UNICEF, WHO and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The campaign is asking the Australian Government to contribute $50 million to the Initiative and to encourage other Commonwealth countries to do the same, as the GPEI is $590 million short of implementing its 2011-12 strategic plan.

"It was an Australian, a Rotarian by the name of Clem Renouf, who first dreamt of a polio-free world and started to make that dream a reality," Michael said. "It would be great if Australians could continue to play an important role in seeing this through.

"People in India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Afghanistan are still suffering from this awful disease which can cripple and deform children and can reappear later in life, even after recovery.

"If we can wipe out polio, it will be the second human disease that has been totally eradicated, after smallpox."

Michael became aware that polio was still a significant world health problem when he met a member of the Rotary Club of Crawley earlier this year. "The club had awarded me a youth scholarship based on my work with the Global Poverty Project and we got talking and he told me how he had suffered with polio as a young man, pulling up his trouser leg to show me the calliper he still wears," he said.

Michael and a team of Rotaract volunteers, including fellow UWA Law student Tegan Smith, have organised The End of Polio Breakfast a month before CHOGM to raise awareness of the campaign and funds for eradication efforts.

The breakfast fundraiser is to be held at the Perth Convention Centre on Wednesday 5 October. Already, the WA Governor, Malcolm McCusker and Tonya McCusker, the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Alan Robson, and the former Premier Alan Carpenter have agreed to attend, bring along a table of people and support the campaign.

The campaign also has the support of eminent immunologist and former Australian of the Year, Sir Gustav Nossal, whose videoed presentation is on The End of Polio website. He talks about Australian mothers in the 1950s being so terrified of their children picking up the disease that "they would stop us going to the movies on Saturday or the swimming pool on Sunday" and of hospital wards full of children and young adults who spent years lying in ‘iron lungs' because their paralysis prevented them from breathing.

"Total eradication of polio is within reach," Michael said. "The movement has already made great progress. It would be tragic if, after coming so far, our generation fell at this last hurdle."

To sign The End of Polio petition or to book a place at the breakfast, go to www.theendofpolio.com

Published in UWA News , 19 September 2011

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