"Every last child"

European Polio Conference coming in May.

The European Polio Conference, organized by Polio-France in cooperation with the European Polio Union (EPU), will be held on 25-27 May in Nancy, France.  Registration details and further information are available here.

This congress will not be a congress like any other, with a learned society that addresses its colleagues. It will be organized by a patient association that wishes to create the necessary conditions for the exchange of knowledge in order to perpetuate its dissemination, but above all to motivate research and innovation in care. This congress is aimed at people with polio and post-polio syndrome from all over the world, and health professionals concerned by the management of polio and post-polio syndrome.

A major focus of the conference is on the post-polio syndrome:

Polio-France is the only national association that gathers and represents exclusively the people carrying sequelae of poliomyelitis. It is also an active member of the Board of Directors of the European Polio Union (EPU). After the serious epidemics of the 1950s and 1960s, the introduction of compulsory vaccination in 1964 marked the end of cases of poliovirus. Some children died at that time, and about 50,000 survivors in France are in various situations of disability due to the after-effects of the disease.

After leaving the rehabilitation centers and reaching adulthood with their disabilities stabilized, all of them were able to study, work, start a family and pursue a career. Many of them are now reaching retirement age. They have blended into the national landscape, fully integrated, and are no longer visible to the point that 40 to 50 years later, it is common to hear people say: “polio no longer exists!” This is true of the viral threat. Yet the survivors with polio scars are among us ; in our neighborhoods, our businesses, our families. They continue to fight, as they always have.

No scientific hindsight allowed us to imagine that, 40 or 50 years later, the natural effects of aging could play a major role in the life process of these disabled people, degrading their remaining capacities as early as 45-50 years old, with more or less brutality and rapidity. Impoverished by the lack of transmission among most health professionals, the body of knowledge on the management of the after-effects of poliomyelitis is such that there is an urgent need to reinitiate the circulation of this knowledge. It is necessary to create (or perpetuate) spaces for the dissemination of scientific knowledge and management methods. This can only be achieved through events that encourage this type of exchange, as proposed by the Nancy conference.

Their motto:

Anyone who lived in the 1950s and 1960s and is now developing progressive weakness needs to be aware of the post-polio syndrome.  Too often physicians unaware of the entity will ascribe an elderly person's impairment to "aging" or inadequate exercise/diet etc.  Many people had mild polio in the pre-vaccine era and were unaware of it.