4/9/2024
The disease of Polio has been much in the news recently because of a ceasefire in the current Gaza/Israel conflict. The no-doubt welcome lull in this horrible war has resulted from the discovery of Polio among Palestinian children. The children of this community are currently undergoing a course of anti-Polio treatments.
Poliomyelitis is an old but acutely infectious viral disease which, in certain forms, paralyses the brain and spinal cord, wasting muscle, particularly in the legs.
When I was a child film actor I played the part of a Polio sufferer called ‘Josie’ who had contracted Polio before the story of the film began. The film was an adaptation of an Australian book called A Sporting Proposition which was written by the significant Australian-British writer, James Aldridge. It was presented by Walt Disney in 1975, the company changing the title of the book for the film to Ride A Wild Pony. Josie was a rich girl in 1920s Australia who, before she contracted Polio, loved riding – a pastime no longer available to her now she could not walk. That was Josie. But the film also told the story of Scott Pirie, a poor boy from the same area as Josie, who captured and trained a wild Welsh mountain pony so that he could get to school. Unhappily, ‘Taff’, as Scotty called him, was a match for the training he received, and he managed to break loose, ending up with Josie, who also fell for the pony’s charms, keeping him and calling him ‘Bo’.
I quote from the blurb on the back of the 1976 Peacock paperback:
“To Josie, the daughter of the wealthiest landowner in town, Bo is an important compensation for her useless legs. To Scotty, the pony is Taff, as wild and independent as himself. But who really owns him? The conflicting claims of the two children build up until the whole town is divided in the tense struggle for the ownership of the pony.”
Yes. There is conflict in Australia over the ownership of a pony. One side is represented by a rich, strong-willed girl who cannot walk after contracting an illness – an illness which, when the film was made in the 1970s, was thought to be largely stamped out; and the other represented by a poor boy, unafraid to stand up for himself when recognising his own in the hands of someone else.
Well I remember the old-fashioned wheelchair, the orthotic calipers fitted, the discussions about what it was truly like not to be able to move my legs. Getting to know the ponies – of Welsh extraction like me. I remember the friendships made – Robert Bettles, John Meillon Jnr, Laurence Goodheart (our stunt double) – the crew, the production team – the beautiful locations in the Australian countryside, and how my mother and I wanted to go back, but never did because we never could.
I could write more of my memories here, but perhaps that could wait for a larger and more happy piece of writing, recording what it was like to be a child in the film industry at that time in those days.
Right now, at this moment in time, I want to communicate to what extent Humanity should take seriously the new impetus towards worldwide Polio vaccinations.
The Polio virus is not communicated through water, but it has been detected through sewage testing in our currently ailing water supplies. It is a virus of a few forms passed on to others through faeces to food and can also be airborne. It is quickly caught where standards of hygiene and sanitation are low. Most children in this situation develop immunity on contracting it. For richer areas where sanitary conditions are better, the virus surprises the better-off child (like Josie) and the effects can be devastating. Vaccinations administered to as many children as possible from all walks of life are therefore essential for the whole global community.
According to my copy of the British Medical Association’s Family Health Encyclopedia, published by Dorling Kindersley in 1990, vaccinations, at that time, were given at 3, 5 and 9 months with booster doses given to 5-year-olds. Today, according to nhs.co.uk, it is given at 8, 12 and 16 weeks old as part of the 6-in-1 covering a range of illnesses, then at 3 years and 4 months before attending school, and lastly, again, at 14 as part of a teenage booster shot: Polio – NHS (www.nhs.uk)