‘WORST DISEASE EVER’
Polio survivor said COVID-19 beats plagues of Egypt
Imogene Daley-Graham is one of the 70 polio survivors in Jamaica, contracting the disease when she was one year old in 1954. At the time, she lived with her family in Whitfield Town, St Andrew. Her mother initially thought she was contracting a common cold and gave her dosages of home remedies.
“She told me that I went to bed good the Saturday night and the following morning I just couldn’t get up; and I was roasting with fever, crying, and my nose was running,” she told THE STAR yesterday.
Polio is a highly contagious viral infection that can lead to paralysis, breathing problems, or even death. Like COVID-19, which continues to sweep across the world, claiming hundreds of thousands of lives in the process, vaccines were not available.
Daley-Graham said she was told by her mother that she was taken to the community clinic when home remedies failed. The doctor initially wrote a prescription for cold and fever, but her mother insisted that more be done.
“When he gave her the prescription, she say, ‘No doc, I don’t want that prescription, I want you to sound (examine) the child’, and when he did, he instantly crushed up the prescription and told her to take me to KPH immediately,” she said.
Daley-Graham’s mother watched in panic and horror as doctors surrounded her infant. All this time, she was unaware that her baby had contracted the potentially deadly virus.
“She said when she asked the nurse, the nurse asked her if she never buy The Gleaner and she told her no, because she didn’t have the funds to buy it the day before. She was there curious, until she get mad and go in the room where the doctors were and they told her that I had polio,” she said.
Young Graham was then transferred to the University Hospital of the West Indies and placed in isolation there. By the following week, the isolation section of the facility was filled with polio patients. She is one of the 70 polio survivors in Jamaica.
“My mother said they then took us to a place in St Catherine called Plum Point and that was located in the sea. They took us there to treat and kill the virus. I think she said I was kept there for about three weeks and then I was taken back to the hospital, where I spent a few more months,” she said.
NO COMPARISON
Although she was too young to remember the polio nightmare, Daley-Graham is convinced that its sting does not compare to that of the novel coronavirus.
“This coronavirus is the worst thing that ever entered this earth. In fact, this is even worse than the plagues of Egypt that the Bible speaks about,” the 67-year-old said.
“This attacks your respiratory system and if you can’t breathe, then is dead you dead, enuh. Pharaoh’s plague is nothing compared to this, and neither was polio. This thing is all over the world and to mi, it’s the worst thing on the face of the earth,” she said.
As of yesterday, the coronavirus had infected more 1.3 million people across the world, killing an estimated 74,500 of them. Jamaica, with 59 cases of the infection, has recorded three deaths.
As COVID-19 cases increase daily across the island, DaleyGraham said she is doing everything in her power to protect herself and her family.
“This is the first time since corona came about that I even came on my verandah. I stay in my backyard and do everything possible. I have a grandchild that has asthma, so we have to be careful,” she said.