Naperville Rotarian traveled to Bangladesh to help eradicate polio

Naperville resident Kent Demuth hadn't been on a trip like this before, but he wouldn't hesitate to go again.

Demuth, a member of the Rotary Club of Naperville, spent two weeks in December helping with an effort to eradicate polio in Bangladesh and visiting other Rotary humanitarian projects in India.

He traveled with an international Rotary team of 14, with nine members from the United States, two from Canada, two from Norway and one from Denmark.

"It wasn't a trip for the faint-hearted," he said. "We did not hit the garden spots."

The main thrust of the trip was to participate in National Immunization Day in Bangladesh. To immunize all children against polio has been a mission of Rotary International since 1985, and $633 million has been contributed toward that cause.

Another $1 million is being raised to obtain a matching grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Bangladesh, a country the size of Iowa with a population of 142 million, had been a success story. The country was polio-free from 2000 until 2006, when 18 cases were reported.

Bangladesh now is considered at-risk because the flooding caused by a recent cyclone could make it easier for the water-borne disease to spread and because it borders India, one of four countries in the world where polio remains epidemic.

But the people of Bangladesh are determined not to give polio a foothold.

Demuth said between 600,000 and 800,000 volunteers turn out for the immunization campaign, including the country's 40,000 Rotarians.

An immunization day in October was followed by the second round Dec. 8, with booths set up every several blocks. Another four days were spent going house-to-house to find any child younger than 5 who might have been missed.

Demuth, who went door-to-door as part of a team of three to administer the oral vaccine, said they found six children who had not been immunized out of 158 homes on one day, and four kids out of 146 homes on a second day.

"The people in the country take it as a mission," he said. "They're very much into making sure this gets done."

Demuth worked in Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka, a modern city with Third-World slums. He stayed in the home of a Rotarian, Bangladesh's former ambassador to South Africa.

He said he found the people of Bangladesh friendly, committed and industrious.

"They recycle everything," he said.

Demuth then visited Rotary projects in India. They included a hospital in New Delhi where re-constructive surgery is done on children who have had polio to enable them to walk. Each surgery costs $200, he said.

"It was surprising, but it wasn't surprising what could be done for so little money," he said.

The trip was an eye-opener for Demuth, who responded to a call for volunteers to join the international team only two weeks before he was to leave.

"I felt it was the right thing to do," he said.

The semi-retired owner of a computer software company has jumped into Rotary with both feet since he joined less than two years ago.

Rita Harvard, the neighbor who introduced him to Rotary, said Demuth has used his computer expertise to improve the club's marketing and communications.

"Right away, they realized what a gem he was," she said. "I'm just so proud of the fact that I was his sponsor."

Demuth, a board member and former executive director of the Illinois Aviation Museum in Bolingbrook, said he and his wife, Bobbie, have raised money for other organizations. But clearly the trip to Bangladesh and India touched him in a special way.

"I would go back," he said. "You walk away with a lot of friends, friends from the team and friends from the country."