Valerie’s ‘One Last Push’ plea
Woman fronts big campaign
A woman from Ebberston who contracted polio aged eight during an epidemic in Leeds in 1952, is the new face of a campaign.
Valerie Brewster is one of three polio survivors fronting the “One Last Push” campaign.
She urges the public to put pressure on the Government to help rid the world of the virus before the next UK General Election in 2020, in the hope that other children will never have to suffer as she did.
Up until the 1980s, polio was still paralysing children here in the UK and Valerie is one of more than 120,000 men and women suffering from the after-effects of this devastating disease.
Valerie said: “What happened to me changed my life forever. I have struggled my whole adult life with the aftereffects of childhood polio; it’s painful, debilitating and frustrating. Polio is just as cruel now as it was then. If there’s an answer to polio, then there isn’t a reason for it to still exist.
“There’s an attitude in the west that it’s now just a Third World problem, and it’s not something people in the UK think they need to worry about. It still exists and it doesn’t need to, so why shouldn’t we be outraged?
“I am determined to do all I can to help drive awareness of the One Last Push campaign to ensure that we are the last to ever have to suffer from polio and save the thousands of children, like me, from having to live with the consequences of this preventable disease.” Valerie recetly met with Filey and Malton MP Kevin Hollinrake, recruiting him to be a Polio Champion and securing his promise to help the cause.