The “beast,” of course, is polio. It has been tamed in the United States, thanks to a massive 30-year campaign of education and vaccination. There is no cure, yet the United States has been polio-free since 1993. The only way to fight it is to prevent it from finding new victims—to starve it.

With that as their mission, Casbergue and 64 American and Canadian fellow Rotarians journeyed at their own expense to the state of Uttar Pradesh in India in early February. Nearly 70 percent of all Indian polio cases last year (1,600) were in Uttar Pradesh. To put that into perspective, 85 percent of the entire world’s polio cases occurred in India.

Casbergue’s group joined the effort to immunize every child under five— 150 million children—during India’s national immunization campaign, the largest public health event in the world. They helped administer the drops of oral polio vaccine, assisted parents in getting their children immunized, accompanied health workers, delivered the serum to clinics and monitored its safety in transit.

“The Indians were incredibly well organized,” Casbergue said. “Their planning and execution were impressive —they carried it off like a war plan. Sometimes, when they couldn’t reach a site in a truck, they’d use bicycles.”

Since 1986, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative has been spearheaded by Rotary International, which is supported by 30,000 Rotary Clubs all over the world. So far, Rotary has put more than $500 million into the effort that has attracted billions more from partners like the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

< Iron lungs kept polio victims alive
in the ’50 s.

Casbergue’s motivation was stronger than his membership in Rotary, though.

“Among my reasons for going (to India) were my memories of growing up in Freeport in the 1930s and ’40s. Polio was frightening to us as children. Our community avoided going to Houston during the summers where it was striking down children in significant numbers. I remember that one of my classmates contracted the disease and had to have surgery to correct his deformity. Images of children in John Casbergue ’51 (left) helps iron lungs—if they survived at all—are still vivid to me.”

Casbergue knows more than the average person about disease; he is a retired medical educator and professor emeritus at Michigan State University. After completing high school and two years of college at Schreiner in 1951, he attended Texas A&M and earned a B.S. degree at Florida State University. He got his master’s and doctoral degrees at Michigan State.

“In the early ’70s, clinical education was a cottage industry,” he said. “The idea that we could improve the quality of learning by increasing the quality of teaching was beginning to gain acceptance.”

Thinking back on his time in India, Casbergue recalls what was sometimes the most helpful thing he could do for a frightened Indian mother who was reluctant to allow her children to be immunized. “I’d tell her that my country is polio-free. I’d say that I’m a grandfather and I know that my children are safe and my grandchildren are safe…all because of this polio vaccine.”

In the entire world, there remain only seven countries where polio is endemic: Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan and Somalia. That’s not good enough for Casbergue.

“I may be going back,” he says.

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