One of the last remaining iron lungs in the UK has been removed from St Thomas’ hospital in London and transferred to the Head Office of Rotary International in Great Britain & Ireland (RIBI).
The iron lungs were used at St Thomas’ for many years to save the lives of polio victims who had suffered respiratory failure. They worked by imitating the action of breathing while patients lay inside them. Pumps increased and decreased air pressure on the chest, enabling air to flow in and out of the lungs. Although this meant that patients were able to breathe, they had to spend long periods of time inside the machine, some for many years, some for decades.
RIBI has been at the forefront of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) since 1979 when Rotary clubs became involved in the polio vaccination campaign in the Philippines. The GPEI started in 1988 with the World Health Organisation, the United Nations and Centers for Disease Control, joining them as partners.
Watching the iron lung leave the hospital were Baroness Jenkin, retired consultant, Dr John Spenser and Roisin Tierney, a nurse who trained at St Thomas’ in 1960 and worked for many years with polio victims. Representing RIBI were District Governors, Eve Conway, Stewart Grainger and Judith Diment.
Baroness Jenkin said: “This marks the end of an era as iron lungs are no longer required to treat polio victims in the UK. Europe has been polio free for more than a decade and cases worldwide were reduced to just 222 last year in the three remaining endemic countries of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria. The fight is now on over the next twelve months, to completely eradicate this disease which was crippling and killing over 350,000 children a year as recently as 1985.”
The iron lung will be used by RIBI to promote the need to complete the polio eradication programme through Rotary International’s End Polio Now campaign and to help raise the $5.5 billion required to have a certified polio free world by 2018.
