Rotary’s 25-year crusade to eradicate polio is personal for Ed Foster.

The Charlotte veterinarian, 2003-2004 district governor, survived the disease his senior year of high school.

Foster briefed Dowagiac Rotary Club Thursday noon at Elks Lodge 889 in recapping the effort for World Polio Day Oct. 24, including the ongoing $200 million challenge grant by June 2012 with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Foster recalled that day in September 1956, early on in his senior year of high school.

As he waited for his girlfriend, who became his bride, to get out of cheerleading practice, Ed experienced an excruciating headache.

“I said to her, ‘If I feel like this in the morning, I’m sure not going to school.’ I missed school Wednesday, but felt a little better Thursday. She came over with a couple of girlfriends and we went out to A&W and got a root beer.”

But Friday morning Foster awakened “violently ill. I’ve never had a headache like that since. I asked my mom to call the doctor. Back in those days doctors made house calls. He wasn’t going to be able to get there until 5:30 or 6 o’clock. I don’t know why she said it, but she thought I was coming down with polio.”

The physician directed him to touch his chin to his chest.

Foster couldn’t.

“In those days, they gave polio victims to orthopedic surgeons,” he said. “I had a rather gruff, I thought, orthopedic surgeon. After three weeks of being in isolation in bed and not being able to see anybody, they put me in a ward and said I could get in a wheelchair.

“I went to get out of bed, stepped on the floor and went into a heap. I hadn’t used my muscles for three weeks! They picked me up and put me in the wheelchair.”

After six weeks, when the doctor was examining a patient in the next bed, Foster asked, “When are you going to let me go home?”

“Three weeks,” came the response which “kind of made my heart sink.”

The doctor devised a test. If Ed could sit up in bed and put his chin on the sheet without bending his knees, he could go home.

“I’d been out for track,” Foster said,

“I was very limber. So I went home and went back to school three weeks later. Rotary was involved with March of Dimes before polio. March of Dimes helped my parents.”

There are three types of polio, he explained. Two has been gone since 1999.

One is most devastating, causing paralysis. Three can cause paralysis “but usually doesn’t. That’s probably what I had,” he said. “Today, with DNA, they could tell me which one it was and which country it came from.”

“We never dreamed getting this done would take 25 years,” Foster said of the eradication effort begun in 1985. “The goal was it would be gone by 2005. Unfortunately, a country has to be free of polio for three years before they’re no longer endemic. North America and South America are basically free of polio — but you’re only a plane ride away” from PAIN — Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and Nigeria, the four remaining nations afflicted.

Referring to Gates, the Microsoft founder turned billionaire global philanthropist, Foster said, “Rotary got the best kick ever for polio when he was on ‘60 Minutes.’”

Foster displayed a slide of an iron lung, salvaged from a hospital in Marquette, which “most people have never seen in action. I have. I show this because I took care of a gentleman who spent his last 36 years of his life in one of these” before dying in 1992.

When Foster started practicing veterinary medicine in 1964, his receptionist lived across the street from Jim Wood.

Because he spayed his dog and cared for it 14 years gratis, Jim gave him two pieces of art painted with his mouth.

“What blows my mind is the patience it took his wife, Donna, to put paint on the brush for him. She was pregnant with their sixth child when he came down with it in August 1956. I was diagnosed in September and missed the first nine weeks of my senior year in high school. I was one of the fortunate ones.

“When his family grew up and left home, he weighed 230 pounds and it took three people to move him in and out of that iron lung. Between our Rotary club and my church, we developed a group of men who helped.”

When Rotary undertook eradicating polio in the mid-1980s, the service organization thought if it raised $120 million and vaccinated 2 million children “we could conquer this disease. We raised $247 million.”

From April 2002 until June 2005, Rotary and its partners tackled another $80 million goal, which became $400 million matched five dollars to one. He was in Brisbane, Australia, when the announcement came that $83 million was reached.

Gates stepped in again in 2007 with another challenge for $100 the foundation would match, or $200 million total.

“It’s still a PAIN to get rid of polio,” he said, “but where do we stand today? Last year we had 1,604 cases, as compared to a thousand cases a day in 1985 in 125 countries. We’ve had 732 cases to date (in 2010), compared to 1,198 last year at this same time. In the four countries, 153 compared to 930. We’re making progress. Unfortunately, we’ve got 579 cases in non-endemic countries, compared to 268 last year. One stands out. I had to look up where it was. Tijikistan had 458 cases this year, compared to zero last year. Their last case was diagnosed July 4” and was brought in from India.

“It points out why we can’t stop,” Foster said. “If we don’t get rid of it, we’re going to be back where we were in 1985. Uttar Pradesh is the most infected state in India. Pakistan and Afghanistan, what points out the strength of Rotary, a year ago last September, the armies and Taliban stood down for 48 hours so Rotary could immunize children. That says a lot about what Rotary’s able to accomplish. I’ve always said if there’s any good that comes out of war — because to my mind, there isn’t — when we invaded Afghanistan, we had Rotarians on the border of Pakistan immunizing children as they crossed.

“India and Prime Minister Singh have really stepped up its campaign — 16 cases this year compared to 464 last year. We’re making headway. If you go from one of these endemic countries to Saudi Arabia, you better be able to prove you’ve been vaccinated. If you haven’t, you’ll get vaccinated in the airport.

“My son spent three weeks on a business trip in India training engineers and he said raw sewage goes down by the streets. Polio spreads by fecal contamination. President Karzai from Afghanistan is also committed to helping Rotary get this job done. If we quit it would cost us more than it’s costing us right now to bring it under control. You won’t stop hearing about this project until polio’s gone.”