Saturday August 27, 2022
By Philip Drost
Polio left Safia Ibrahim with a life-long disability. She doesn’t want others to experience what she did
Safia Ibrahim wants people to know that polio can have life-long effects. (Submitted by Safia Ibrahim)
When Safia Ibrahim was just a year old living in Somalia, she contracted a virus that would change the rest of her life. She came down with polio, a disease that had been nearly eradicated in most places around the world because of vaccinations.
But with polio reemerging in some parts of the world, she's urging everyone to make sure they're vaccinated, so they won't have to go through what she did.
"Polio is a lifelong illness. It's a disability that worsens ... over time," Ibrahim told The Current guest host Nora Young.
Polio is once again circulating in parts of the U.S, U.K. and Israel. There hasn't been a polio diagnosis in Canada for decades.
A vast majority of the Canadian public has been vaccinated against polio, and while immunization rates among children ebb and flow, the latest available federal data from 2017 shows roughly 90 per cent of toddlers had all three required polio shots.
Ibrahim wants people to know that polio can have long-term effects. Known by some as the crippler, in some cases it permanently damages nerve cells that control the muscles, leading to paralysis.
Growing up with the disease, Ibrahim could only crawl, not walk. That meant that she couldn't go to school in Somalia, because the school wasn't accessible. Now, even after getting medical treatment in Canada, she still has mobility issues.
"Sometimes things like walking or riding a bike or even running or climbing the stairs is difficult. Anything that requires physical activity is difficult for me," she said.
Ibrahim wants to make sure people are up-to-date on their vaccinations.
"As a polio survivor, hearing [of a] new case in New York and other countries are extremely sad and deeply personal for me," she said.
"It's sad because we have a vaccine that's effective in its prevention against polio. It's personal because I know what it feels like to live with a disability from a virus that is totally preventable. So it's hard."
Safia Ibrahim has used her story to advocate for vaccines, including at International Development Week in Ottawa in 2020, where met with then-minister of international development Karina Gould. (Submitted by Safia Ibrahim)
Global set back
The global community has been working to completely eradicate polio, according to Dr. Olakunle Alonge. And while he says its recent resurgence is a setback, there is a silver lining in that more attention is being brought to the disease.
"The attention that it's going to draw to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative might actually help push the efforts through the last mile," said Alonge, an associate professor of International Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md.
"It also portends the issues around coverage of vaccination," he added. "It's really important to recognise that these vaccines are safe."
In Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada intends to start testing wastewater in some cities to check for traces of the polio virus. Dr. Allison McGeer, an infectious disease physician at Sinai Health System in Toronto, says it shouldn't be taken as a cause for alarm.
"On a relative scale, we still have very small numbers of polio cases around the world. We still have very high vaccination rates," said McGeer.
"It's not that eradication will not happen. It's just that this is going to require focus and effort and a recommitment to making sure that eradication happens."