Italian
Today is World Polio Day, the World Polio Day. We talk about it with Pina Mediati who contracted the Poliovirus in 1961 and still suffers from Post Polio, an unrecognized state of the disease.
Today is World Polio Day, the World Day of Polio established by the World Health Assembly in 1988 to eradicate the disease from the world.
Italy and Europe, thanks to extensive vaccination campaigns, have had Polio Free Status since 2002, meaning they have the official certification from the WHO of being polio-free countries. However, there are still countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan where this terrible virus is still circulating.
Polio was first described in 1789 and recorded in epidemic form first in early 19th century Europe and then in the United States. In 1958, over 8000 cases were reported in Italy alone. By 1988, the disease was paralyzing ten children every 15 minutes in almost every country in the world. In our country, polio vaccination has been mandatory since 1966 and the last endemic case of polio occurred in 1982. (Source: ISS)
For the occasion, we interviewed Pina Mediati who contracted the Poliovirus in 1961 in Rome when she was twenty months old and who still suffers from the so-called Post Polio.
Hi Pina, today is World Polio Day, would you like to share your story with us?
“Hello, I was born on the first of February ’59, a healthy baby, at 8 months I already start walking, I am a lively child, everything is fine. I was born in Rome, in a neighborhood that was once called “le Baracche” but for me they were villas, if I look at them with my eyes now. On November 4, 1961 in the morning I am prepared and dressed up nicely because once November 4th was a holiday, and from home I go to Piazza Venezia, where the Unknown Soldier is, and I go to a party. I return home in the afternoon and I was told that I was saying “Bua bua bua” and I had a high fever. Everyone thought I was tired from the day of celebration and I went to bed. But I kept saying “Bua bua bua”, so the next morning they called the family doctor and he said “Yes, yes, I will come see her around 2 in the afternoon”. However, already in those hours, from what my grandmother told me, it was clear that my legs were weak. When the doctor arrived, he said that it was urgent to go to the hospital because I had Polio. So they first took me to a hospital in Rome, and then they sent me to Ariccia. Here they kept me in isolation for forty days and they also put me in an iron lung. These are all stories that my family tells me, because I was little. I think I can remember from when I was 4 or 5 years old, I remember being at the nursery “Nido verde Lyda Cini”. Remember this name well!”
But how did you contract Polio?
“At that time it was already mandatory to get the anti-Polio vaccination, the Sabin vaccine had already been released. However, they took me to the doctor but I had a cold. I was sick. She said to wait a week and so that week I got the infection.”
Don’t know where?
“When I got Polio, in Rome at Montagnola, in that week another girl got infected. But I don’t know. I must have caught it there for sure. There was something, I don’t know. I can’t explain it to you. But we were two. She was a little younger than me, but since they caught it in time, she was left with a lesion and paralyzed in only half a leg. While I, since it took a long time before they stopped the virus with a lumbar puncture, was affected in both legs, the back, and the left arm. If you intervened earlier, at least from what they tell me, you stop this virus.”
So, were you at the Nido Verde Lyda Cini Institute and?
“It is in a beautiful area of Rome, in Monte Mario, one of the trendiest areas. The most beautiful thing that I still carry with me today is how they treated us inside the institute. You have to think that in the 1960s we were not confined. We, polio survivors from Rome, were about 150, we went in the morning and they brought us back home in the afternoon. In the morning there were buses that came to pick up children in various areas of Rome and took us to Monte Mario. There was a nursery, a kindergarten for younger children, and elementary schools. So, I attended both the nursery and elementary school there. It was not run by nuns but by the Misses. We were treated like princes and princesses. The day unfolded with games and therapies if you were at the nursery, and with school and therapies if you were at school.”
How did the therapies work?
During the week, we had maybe the swimming pool shift, the gym shift, massages, machines, etc. I’ll tell you about the swimming pool. I don’t remember how I learned to swim, but I know I can swim and in the ’80s I even joined a team in Mestre (Ve) and made it to the National team. But we’ll talk about that later. The therapy in the pool was that we would go into the water, do exercises, and even have little races. Then we would come out and each of us, groups of 6 or 7 people, had our own sunbed to rest for at least half an hour. They dried our hair, dressed us, prepared us, and then sent us back to school. In the gym, we did gymnastics, and then they put us on a big mat and made us do UV lamps, like the ones now. They put goggles on us, everything, because it was all Vitamin D that we needed for our bones. I understood this later. Then there was the day of the massage room, so you had the lady giving you a massage and then on that occasion you also had half an hour with what they called the little ovens. Imagine, how can I explain it, you know the MRI machine? A piece of an MRI machine, a bell-shaped one. We would put only our legs inside and we had ten light bulbs on, normal light bulbs, and these also helped with the Vitamin D. Then there was playtime, we had a beautiful garden, so each of us, in groups, had our own roundabout, very big, and we would gather there to play, color. We didn’t have wheelchairs, they didn’t exist at that time, so people like me who couldn’t walk, were on… imagine seeing baby strollers like the ones now, they had equipped the whole institute’s path, both indoors and outdoors, with handrails, so by pushing ourselves with our hands we could move or the children who could walk would push us and give us a little help. There were also similar fences outside and you could manage, or you would ask the ladies for help. I also made my First Communion there and it was a beautiful moment because we had catechism, another activity, and we also had the tailor shop, because they made our clothes. We felt like we were brides. The boys didn’t, they bought their own clothes, while they made all the girls the same dress, and it was beautiful.
But in all of this, what about your parents?
“I used to come back home in the evening, they didn’t spend anything. We didn’t spend a penny, everything was subsidized by the State and by a Princess. To tell you, we had a uniform. Us girls had a little yellow apron, and the boys green. The green bathrobe, and then the jumpsuit, everything. You always have to think about the ’60s, all this underwear, let’s say this dowry, every year was given to us because we were growing up, and we were given a voucher for the Rinascente in Rome, imagine how much stuff they gave us, and we were like jewels! Beautiful!
And how did you get there?
“We had the bus, I was the first to get on in my area, because there were 4 buses running around Rome, I was the first to get on and the last to get off, by now I had learned the route by heart because sometimes a new driver would come and maybe wouldn’t know the way, right? And so sitting in the front I would say “Turn this way, turn that way”. Just think, always the 60s, we had a bus with a television! I am who I am precisely because I received things in a normal way, I’ve never been interned!”
But who was subsidizing this Institute?
“Princess Yana Cini and the Ministry of Health.”
And how did you get to Venice?
“We were in Rome, every 15 days the helicopter would arrive and Professor Fabio Franco and Doctor Frizziero would descend. They were the ones who treated polio patients at the le Grazie Hospital in Venice. When we needed surgeries and operations, they would send us to the San Giovanni e Paolo Civil Hospital in Venice, where there was a team with a doctor specialized in feet, one for muscle transplants, there were four of them. After having surgery at the hospital, they would send us to le Grazie, where we would stay for a period because we had to have casts, etc. and undergo rehabilitation, and then they would send us back to Rome. Then they closed le Grazie, and in the meantime, I grew up and attended middle school. And I always went to the Institute in the afternoon after school because I attended regular public middle school, the smaller minibus would pick us up and take us for therapies, so we only went there for therapies.”
But how did you manage to move and get around in middle school?
“I was born, I walk, Polio, I don’t walk until the age of 17/18 years. In the meantime, I underwent 13 surgeries at the Hospital of Venice and through these I managed to walk first with two braces, then with one, and then at home without anything, until I was about forty I could more or less move around at home and outside, for longer paths I used crutches. However, after finishing school, in June, I was one of the first to come back to Venice and I did June, July, August, and early September not at Grazie anymore, because they had closed it, but at Santa Maria del Mare. So I did 3 months of therapy there, then when they closed there too, I went to San Camillo. I underwent therapy constantly until 1978.”
And then?
“Then I was older, I couldn’t go to Nido Verde anymore. About 3 years ago, us kids met up in Rome, we had lunch together. On October 8th, and from then on every year we meet on that date. That’s when I found out it was closed and then destroyed and we don’t know why.”
Let’s continue with this path of yours. What about high school?
“In the meantime, from Rome I moved to Ostia and studied Accounting for 2 years in Ostia, then I moved to Milan and finished there. But in the meantime, I was going back and forth to Venice for therapies.”
When did you move to Venice permanently?
“Let me think… around 1977/78”
This is a bit of your story, but you were telling me that I had to keep in mind the name of Lyda Cini, why?
“I always had this princess in mind and when I come to Venice I hear about the Cini Foundation everywhere. I said: “Do you want to bet this Princess has something to do with it.” But I had never had the courage to delve into it, to talk to someone. But I always had this fixed idea, because I kept telling myself: is it my fantasy or is it something real? And instead in October three years ago I had to deliver an apartment of the Don Vecchi Structure, where I work, to the AIL association (Italian Leukemia Association). The President of the association, who lives in Rome, comes together with two councilors and I show them the apartment, explain a bit about the structure and at the end I show them mine, where at the entrance I have a photo of me meeting Pope John Paul II.”
He asks me: “And what about here?” and I say: “You know, I participated in the Paralympics, I did a lot of swimming.” “Oh, I see,” he says, “So you had an accident?” And I reply: “No accident, I had Polio!” I told him. “Polio?” he says, “You see, we had an institute in Monte Mario…” and I say to him “But excuse me, Nido Verde?” “Oh yes, do you know it?“
And you know, I have the gift of the gab and I start telling him that we had a Princess who was very good, who gave us so much… everything I’ve just told you, I told him. These two advisors who were in front of him, I was in the middle, they say, “But tell him who you are!” so I turn around and say to him, “But excuse me, who are you?” “I am Giovanni Alliata di Montereale, the son of the Princess.” “
I have goosebumps. It’s insane!
“Can you believe it? Both of us were crying, we hugged each other, she promised to show me everything. But can you imagine, Mom fought so much for Polio, she helped Sabin with his research, in fact there is a picture of the Princess, Sabin, and my Professor, Fabio Franco delle Grazie. Her son has continued to carry on his mother’s project because Sabin, after finding the Polio vaccine, was researching cancer, and so he is the president of AIL! What happened to me is just too beautiful!”
Really beautiful, and fate would have it just in the days right before World Polio Day
“I consider myself lucky, very lucky. When everyone used to say to me when I was little, ‘Poor thing, who will take care of this poor girl, who knows what she will do when she grows up, poor thing,’ and instead I have a beautiful life. Let’s say that the tough period I went through was when I moved to Ostia and lost the little friends I had in Rome, during my teenage years. There I realized that I was not normal because up to that moment I didn’t feel bad about my disability. But when my little friends were gone, they had boyfriends, etc., there I realized it and I spent days and days crying. At that time, we, polio survivors, as teenagers, where could we find a boyfriend? Only at Santa Maria del Mare or at San Camillo. It’s not like you could go around, to discos, here and there. Many polio survivors married each other, first love is like that, that was the life you led, you didn’t go elsewhere.”
But let’s go back to Polio, I am very ignorant on the subject and I think most people are too, since it has been gone in Italy for many years
“Actually it’s not quite like that, what’s happening to us old Polio survivors, we are experiencing Post Polio. This means that it’s as if the virus has resurfaced and therefore all the autonomies you had before are now slipping away. That’s why I can no longer walk, I can’t get up from my wheelchair anymore, and I’m always afraid of falling. I’ve become weak again. But nobody takes care of us, except for the Hospital of Malcesine (VR) where we can receive therapies. It’s not like if I say I want to have therapies they prescribe them to me, it’s very difficult, because by now we are chronic. But if they helped us a little, this decline would be somewhat slowed down. I understand that you have an age, like any elderly person, but the wear and tear I have on my shoulders, always moving around in a wheelchair, doing certain things is different from another. We even asked the Chamber of Deputies, I went there about 15 years ago, to pass a law to recognize our condition. But we are still waiting.”
So what would be the message you’d like to convey to everyone?
“Let post-polio syndrome also be recognized. Because we who are the last ones, I am 64 years old, need to be more followed and recognized”
Would you like to add anything else regarding Polio in general?
“I hope that this terrible disease will be eradicated as soon as possible even in the last countries where it is present. Even though with Polio you can live, I have had and have a beautiful life, I have two daughters, now I am a grandmother, I have everything! And the barriers, as it has been said for a lifetime now, are cultural barriers. And if everyone thought “Today I know this, tomorrow I may not know” many things could be solved, like architectural barriers, etc. “
We thank you, Pina, for this wonderful story you have given us.
Pina Mediati: born in Rome on 01/02/1959. Diagnosed with Polio at 20 months. After 13 surgeries, she started walking again with the help of braces. Joined the national Paralympic swimming team in the early ’80s. Instructor of FIN SWIMMING (first disabled), she founded the VELOX SPECIAL OLYMPIC SPORTS GROUP in Mestre in 1989. She was the first disabled woman to complete the Venice Marathon in 1986. In the 2000s, she worked as a social policy consultant for the municipality of Venice and later as a councilor in the Chirignago Zelarino Municipality. Currently, she is in charge of the Don Vecchi 6 and 7 center.
