By Kun Li NEW YORK, 13 May 2005 – Striking at the heart of a global polio epidemic, a door-to-door immunization campaign kicks off on 14 May, aiming to reach the most vulnerable children in the poorest communities across Africa.
PRINTZ--Mary Selina (nee) Horn, died February 21, 2009 of congestive heart failure due to post polio syndrome.
He has also worked with Jonas Salk (discoverer of the Polio vaccine) and heart transplant pioneer Christiaan Barnard.
"Rotarians continue to be the heart and soul of the polio eradication effort," said Ann M. Veneman, Executive Director of UNICEF.
Dr. Lewis P. Rowland, a professor of neurology at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital and the former chairman of the neurology department, said there were no known links between post-polio syndrome and heart conditions that might require a pacemaker.
Her death, at her home in Tappan, N.Y., was of congestive heart failure, a result of post-polio syndrome, her family said.
It was a period when life expectancy increased sharply (to 71 years in 1970 from 65 in 1940), aided by such triumphs of medical science as polio vaccination, penicillin and heart-lung bypass.
Diphtheria, mumps, measles and polio were conquered, and pneumonia and heart attacks became far less deadly.
But a polio diagnosis in 1965 and a heart attack in 1966 took a physical and psychic toll that is felt in this work, an 11-movement song cycle (with texts by Lorca, Rilke, Apollinaire and Wilhelm Küchelbeker) that mostly meditates on death.
Not being 70, I hasten to add – I am very glad to be in reasonable health after a life punctuated by polio, acute renal failure and a heart attack, but I hate the term "the elderly".
