San Antonio Team on its way !

Here is a story about the SA team which appeared in our daily newspaper, the San Antonio Express-News, the morning before our departure on Feb 27, 2009:

By Elizabeth Allen - Express-News

When administering vaccine to a struggling child while crowded by curious onlookers in a remote Indian village, it's important not to touch the medicine vial to the child's lips.

That's one of the tips that Boone and Dianne Powell brought back to fellow Rotarians this month as the others prepare to join an international effort to eradicate polio.
A member of the Rotary Club of San Antonio, Dianne Powell and her husband joined the teams of Rotary Club International, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization and UNICEF in the fight. Their trip and a two-week journey launching Friday from San Antonio were organized by local Rotarian and past district president Jim Berg.

Rotarians have long fought polio, but until this year, nobody from South Texas District 5840 has gone to India, Berg said.

“We've sent money that way, but we've never sent people that way,” he said. “I decided that I had heard about it long enough, and I wanted to go ... and show everybody with my camera and with my blog.”

Berg, John and Judy Hutcherson of the Fredericksburg Morning Rotary Club and Nora Turner of the Wimberley Rotary Club expect to arrive in India, jetlagged and exhausted, just in time for the next National Immunization Day, on March 1. Aided by the Greehey Family Foundation and NuStar Energy, they'll join a massive effort led by Indian health workers.

“There are far more Indians involved than Rotarians from Western countries,” Berg said. “We happen to go there only to be boots on the ground.”

But the presence of Westerners, combined with thousands of bright yellow advertising banners, draw attention to the event, according to the blog of Maine Rotarian Elias Thomas, whom Berg and the others will join.

Each push will vaccinate millions of children in a few days. Over 20 years, such efforts have helped reduce the annual world polio infection rate from more than 300,000 to about 2,000.

Dianne Powell grew up in Fort Worth, a world away from Chahalka, the Muslim village near Delhi where the Powells spent much of their visit hauling bricks to build bathrooms.

But she shares a physical link with them.

“I had polio when I was about 8 years old, and I had friends that I got to know in the hospital that didn't make it,” Powell said.

For many Americans younger than 40, polio is a storybook illness afflicting children of the past. But it's an ongoing reality in India, Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Poliomyelitis attacks the nervous system and can lead to permanent paralysis, usually in the legs. Sometimes it kills its sufferers by immobilizing their breathing muscles. It usually affects children and spreads most aggressively in communities with poor sanitation systems.

Not that many years ago, it was a terrifying reality in the U.S., affecting thousands of people a year. President Franklin D. Roosevelt contracted it in 1921 at age 39.
Dr. Jonas Salk developed the first polio vaccine, in 1954, and a 1962 aerial photo shows a long line of people snaking around San Antonio's Municipal Auditorium waiting for immunization.

Powell's memory of getting polio was as a sudden strike.

“I woke up one morning and I couldn't move,” she said. “They took me to the hospital and they did a spinal tap, which was excruciating.“Polio meant nothing to me. All I knew was there was this very painful procedure, and the next thing I knew, I was in a ward with all these kids, and my mother and father went away.”

It was the early 1950s, and Powell was treated with hot towels, baths and physical therapy. She watched as other children whose respiratory systems were attacked were placed in iron lungs, the large metal cylinders that acted like a bellows to regulate breathing.

“They were horrible-looking things, these big tubes, and you'd see a child's head sticking out of them,” Powell said.

When the Powells returned from India this month, they sat down with Berg, Turner and John Hutcherson.

“I just didn't realize how rough it was going to be, and how primitive our quarters were going to be, and how hard the work was going to be,” Dianne Powell said. On the other hand, she said, the group was generously fed and hosted.

She and her husband offered practical travel tips — hats, hand sanitizer, patience — as well as a description of immunization day, when crowds surrounded health workers.
Boone Powell spoke of the shock of seeing very young children in charge of infants.
“So you see the crowd kind of stirring in an area, and then, plop! This baby comes through the crowd carrying another baby,” he said.

For Hutcherson, the difficulties of third-world travel aren't new. Both Hutchersons have been on service trips, he said, with Judy Hutcherson recently back from Afghanistan.

“It's an opportunity to serve, and it's an opportunity to ... establish relationships with people around the world, and I believe that's how you do peace in the world,” he said. “It changes my view, and it also has an influence on their view.”