Plight of polio survivors to be examined

The situation of people who contracted polio between the 1930s and 1960s is to be urgently examined by the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health, its chairman has said.

Mr Batt O'Keeffe TD, speaking at the publication of a study into the late effects of polio said there was clearly "a degree of financial hardship" being endured by people who contracted the disease as long ago as the 1930s. This needed "to be urgently looked at".

"We need to see how we can alleviate this," he said.

The report, Polio - The Late Effects Reality, commissioned by the Post Polio Support Group (PPSG) confirms there are over 7,200 polio "survivors" living in Ireland. It says those who contracted the disease and who continue to suffer in its aftermath, feel "the State is showing little interest in them".

Polio is a viral disease which can cause minor flu-like symptoms or in worse cases paralysis or death. It has been virtually eradicated in the West with mass vaccination programmes.

Up to 4,200 people here, however, are suffering with the symptoms of the condition Late Effects Polio (LEP), says the report. LEP, an internationally recognised neurological condition, affects people who suffered from paralytic polio, often decades later.

LEP symptoms include severe pain in muscles and joints, progressive muscle weakening, extreme fatigue, respiratory difficulties, severe intolerance of cold and a decline in ability to walk or carry out usual daily activities. There is no cure and very little drug treatment for LEP.

For the report 224 polio survivors were interviewed by occupational therapists. The 224 were aged between 37 and 87, the average age being 60 and with the most born between 1940 and the mid 1950s.

Over 50 per cent began to experience LEP between the ages of 45 and 59. "It can be seen that polio is a long-lasting and debilitating disease that can cause unforeseen effects many years after the initial paralytic phase," says the report.

Some 56 per cent of those surveyed could only manage financially with difficulty, with over one third living on or below the minimum wage.

Sixty-seven per cent of interviewees required assistance or aids to walk. As recently as five years ago just 35 per cent had difficulties walking.

And 63 per cent had sought assistance in various areas, ranging from aids and appliances to services and adaptation of their accommodation, to retain their independence.

Currently the Department of Health does not list polio or LEP as a long-term illness. The report says it should, in the same way it does multiple sclerosis and motor neurone disease.

"It is clear," says the report, "that any individual who has experienced a paralytic episode of polio and has been diagnosed with LEP should be entitled in their own right and in the first instance to a medical card."

The PPSG can be contacted on (01) 8730338.