People around the region can help eradicate polio throughout the world this week by purchasing a golf ball.
The Kenton County Rotary Club‘s annual charity Golf Ball Drop is scheduled to take place this Thursday. The event will see as many as 400 numbered golf balls dropped from the top of an Independence fire truck ladder.
People from around the community can purchase a numbered golf ball for $10. The owner of the ball that lands closest to the pin splits the pot with the Rotary Club. The club then puts its half of the funds toward polio eradication throughout the world.
The event comes a few days before World Polio Day, itself established by Rotary International, on Saturday, Oct. 24.
“Rotary has spearheaded this effort to vaccinate children worldwide and try to eliminate this disease,” said Kenton County Rotary Club President Chris Walsh.
Polio is short for poliomyelitis, a viral infection that’s highly contagious but preventable with a vaccine. Like any virus, polio can’t be treated with antibiotics, and it has no cure. It is largely transmitted orally by ingesting contaminated food or water.
Most cases of polio are asymptomatic, and a smaller portion of patients develop flu-like symptoms. About 5% of patients experience paralysis or other severe neurological damage, such as meningitis, said Dr. Mary Kate Greenwood, who serves as the assistant director of St. Elizabeth Healthcare’s Family Medicine Residency.
“We historically think of it as a virus that paralyzes people, but really a small percentage of people actually get paralyzed from it,” Greenwood said. “It’s just when the whole population is exposed to it, 5% is a lot of people.”
The first vaccine for polio was developed in 1952 by virologist Jonas Salk. A subsequent variation of the vaccine that could be administered orally was developed by medical researcher Albert Sabin. Since then, the prevalence of the disease around the world has been curtailed and even eradicated in some countries. The only two nations where polio remains endemic are Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to the Polio Global Eradication Initiative.
The most recent case of polio in the United States was documented in Rockland County, New York, in 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The patient was a 20-year-old Hungarian traveler who had not been previously vaccinated against the disease.
“It still exists,” Greenwood said. “It’s out there, and getting vaccinated is the only thing that you can do about it.”
Rotary International and its partners have distributed vaccines to over three billion children around the world since 1988. Yet, there is still “hesitancy,” said former Kenton County Rotary Club President Greg Corwin, among some to get vaccinated.
“Measles is coming back because there’s a lot of disinformation regarding that (vaccine),” said Corwin as another example. LINK nky’s content sharing partner LEX 18 recently reported that the number of confirmed measles cases in Kentucky has climbed to 174 this year, according to the Kentucky Department for Public Health.
“Because of world travel, we need to keep vaccinating kids, even in places like Omaha, Nebraska,” said Walsh.
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that the number of kids receiving various vaccinations, including the polio vaccine, has been declining in the United States since the 2015-2016 school year, although roughly 92% of kids are still covered.
Greenwood said that polio vaccine rates aren’t concerning at the moment, but the disease “is contagious enough that we could see it resurface.”
The golf ball drop will take place at St.Barbara’s church on Turkeyfoot Road in Independence at noon on Thursday, Oct. 22. Learn how to purchase a golf ball for the drop and get other information about the event at www.kentonrotary.org/GolfBallDrop.
