The World-Wide Fellowship of Polio Warriors

The world-wide fellowship of Polio Warriors’ mission statement is “To relieve the need of Post-Polio Syndrome (PPS) sufferers around the world by acting as a resource by directing sufferers to support groups, medical advice and by any other means that the trustees deem necessary”

Our initial aim at this point is to increase the number of help desks, establish a number of ‘drop-in’ clinics around the world with medical support, and to enlighten all bodies currently blind to the challenges we are now facing.

A 2001 report by The March of Dimes, a non-profit agency founded by US President Franklin Roosevelt, a polio survivor, noted that up to 20 million polio survivors around the world face the threat of new disabilities 15 to 40 years after their original illness, which could leave them using wheelchairs or ventilators for the rest of their lives, supported today by the World Health Organisation (WHO) who in March of 2019 estimated there are 20 million people worldwide with some degree of disability caused by poliomyelitis. A 1996 National Center for Health Statistics survey reported a preliminary estimate of one million survivors in the United States. About 450,000 of them reported paralysis resulting in some form of impairment.

For years most of these polio survivors lived active lives, their memory of polio long forgotten, their health status stable. By the late ’70s, polio survivors were noting new problems of fatigue, pain, and additional weakness. By the mid-’80s, health professionals and policymakers recognized these new problems as being real and not “only in the patients’ minds.” Studies on this phenomenon called “post-polio syndrome” have been – and are still being – conducted in research institutions and medical centres.

Contact The World-wide Fellowship of Polio Warriors

Our members’ website is at www.poliowarriors.org and we have an information website at www.poliowarriors.info which is linked to a free smartphone App, ‘Polio Warriors’

Membership of our Fellowship is completely free and will always be so. We have a world map of Support Groups, Medical Professionals with a knowledge of Post-Polo Syndrome, and Polio Survivors who have registered their details allowing us to add them to our world map. This tries to ensure that no Polio Survivor should ever feel alone and neglected.

To contact our Fellowship:

Email: peter@poliowarriors.org or Telephone: +44 7504198068