The last time your child was sick, did you ever consider it might be a life threatening illness like polio. For most of us, thanks to vaccinations, we’ve never worried about our children contracting polio. As a parent of a child that had bacterial meningitis at 11 months old, I know firsthand what its like to have no control over my critically ill child.

Our experience makes me an even bigger advocate for providing vaccinations to children. The world is on the verge of eradicating polio completely, and if we work together we can make history.

Did you know Polio (poliomyelitis) mainly affects children under five years old? Once the disease is contracted it can cause paralysis in  just hours. I can’t imagine watching a once healthy child, contract polio and experience total paralysis or worse death.

Polio is a crippling disease that attacks the brain and spinal cord. Its highly contagious, easily spread from person to person, often fatal, and there’s no cure. Thanks to vaccinations, the last naturally occurring case of polio in the United States was in 1979.

In 2009, India, a country with half of the world’s polio cases, became free of the disease. Thanks to vaccines, there hasn’t been a reported case of polio in India for almost two years. Currently, polio is only present in three countries Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Today, Wednesday October 24, 2012 is World Polio Day and there’s so much to celebrate, like the 398 million children in 2012 that have been vaccinated against polio. Over the last 20 years, about 2.5 billion children around the world have been vaccinated against polio, which has resulted in a 99 percent decrease in the number of polio cases per year.

We’ve come a long way baby, but there’s still a long uphill road to travel to eradicate this disease. Until polio is eradicated, children in ALL countries are at risk!

Let’s end polio together! Shot@Life is one of many organizations working to make polio the second disease in history to be eradicated. A polio vaccine costs $1. Shot @Life wants to raise $40,000, so 40,000 more lives can be protected. They need your help to reach their goal and are asking for a $50 donation to help the fight!

There are more than enough problems and illnesses in the world today, let’s take polio out of the mix.