Polio is a horrible, horrible virus. I pray this doesn’t happen to someone else..
Mark tells of fears after life-time battle
ONE of the last people to have contracted polio in the UK has described his nightmare ordeal battling the disease.
With the virus thought to be spreading here for the first time since the 1970s, Mark Esho has told how he was paralysed from the neck down at the age of five.
Doctors gave him just a 10 per cent chance of survival.
Mark, now 59, hopes no child goes through what he endured. More than half a century later, he is unable to move his left leg and right arm but can walk with aids.
The businessman, who runs his own internet company 123 Ranking in Leicester, said when he read reports this week health bosses had detected poliovirus in the London sewage network “it sent a shiver through my spine”.
He added: “It’s a horrible, horrible virus. I just pray that this doesn’t happen to someone else.”
Mark was taken ill in 1967 at a time when polio was thought to have been eradicated in Britain.
He recalled: “I woke in the night and walked to the toilet. I went back to bed, not knowing it was the last time I’d walk normally.
“I had a massive fit and blacked out. I was paralysed from the neck down, it was the scariest thing.
“When they found out it was polio, it caused a mass panic. It can have a devastating impact on people’s lives, it’s a nightmare.”
He was then hit with post-polio syndrome in his mid-30s, forcing him to quit work due to chronic fatigue and muscle pains.
But Mark was awarded an MBE for services to business and has set up The Circle Foundation to fund and support disabled people starting companies.
The UK Health Security Agency declared a national incident after poliovirus was detected at the Beckton Sewage Treatment Works in East London. No human cases have been reported.