When polio struck: From a Bungoma village, one girl’s fight to walk, rise, and change the world

In the heart of Bungoma, a rural corner of western Kenya, a baby girl was born in 1969 beneath the thatched roof of a mud-walled home. Her name was Anne Wafula.

At just two years old, her legs stopped working. Polio  a highly infectious viral disease that once paralysed more than 350,000 children annually across 125 countries claimed her ability to walk. But the virus didn’t just attack her body; it triggered something far more devastating: a village’s prejudice.

“They said I was cursed,” Anne recalls. “Some called me a witch’s child. My father was told to abandon me.”

He didn’t. George Wafula, a humble village teacher, stood by his daughter when others turned away. “I look at my father as my hero,” she says softly. “He believed in me when everybody else gave up.”

The cost was steep. George lost friends. Neighbours whispered. Even relatives urged him to “stop wasting money” on a disabled girl who, they said, “would only end up pregnant.”

But he pressed on  and in doing so, lit a fire that would carry his daughter from the red soils of Bungoma to the most prestigious sporting arenas on earth.

“Polio is not just a health challenge  it is a social one,” says Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO). “The stigma and exclusion faced by survivors can often be more disabling than the disease itself.”

Anne’s childhood was shaped by barriers  both physical and social  but education became her weapon against them. She pushed through ridicule to become the first in her family to attend university, studying Education at Moi University. Later, she lectured at Machakos Technical College.

“My dad always said education was a magic key,” she remembers. “It could unlock doors I never imagined.”

But even with a degree, Anne felt trapped. Kenya in the 1990s offered little accessibility for people like her. Every journey required help. Every trip was an ordeal.

Then, in 2000, she moved to the United Kingdom and received something that would change everything: a wheelchair.

“For the first time, I could move without fear of falling or breaking a bone. I could wheel myself. I felt free,” she says. “It gave me not just mobility, but identity.”

One evening in 2002, while flipping through television channels in her new home, Anne stopped  transfixed  at the sight of women racing at high speed in wheelchairs.

“I was mesmerised. I thought: I can do this.”

In Athens 2004, Anne Wafula became the first female wheelchair racer from Sub-Saharan Africa to compete at the Paralympic Games. She didn’t win a medal but she won something bigger: visibility.

“I always say I had a voice before the Paralympics, but it was silent. On that start line, my voice was heard,” she says. “When the commentator announced my name and said it was great to see a woman from sub-Saharan Africa competing, I felt proud. I forgot to even hear the starting gun.”

Her performance and presence challenged stereotypes about African women and disability on a global stage. Two years later, she became a British citizen, racing for Great Britain and continuing to shatter ceilings.

But Anne’s journey was never about medals. It was about justice.

In 2016, aboard a British train with no accessible toilets, Anne was forced to soil herself mid-journey  a humiliating experience that could have broken her spirit. Instead, she turned it into a campaign.

“I told the transport minister, ‘I don’t want any other disabled person to be humiliated like I was,’” she recounts. Her activism led to policy changes and the expansion of Changing Places — larger, fully accessible public toilets across the UK.

Her fight extended beyond infrastructure. Through the Olympia Wafula Foundation, she has distributed wheelchairs to children across Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Nigeria, opened doors to education, and mentored young people with disabilities. She now sits on the boards of UK Athletics, the British Paralympic Association, and serves as a Commonwealth envoy.

In 2014, her contributions were recognised with an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire)  one of Britain’s highest civilian honours.

“Access and inclusion are not luxuries  they are fundamental rights,” says Henrietta Fore, former Executive Director of UNICEF. “Children with disabilities must not only survive diseases like polio, they must thrive  in school, in sport, and in society.”

“Inclusion is not charity  it is a right,” Anne insists. “With your ability or your disability, you can still perform at the highest level. And those who do deserve respect because it is hard work.”

From the stigma of being labelled a curse to the spotlight of global recognition, Anne Wafula’s life is a powerful testament to resilience  and to the transformative power of one person’s refusal to give up.

“I want to be remembered as that girl who gave,” she says, pausing. “Not because she was rich, but because she knew what it meant to lack.”

Today, Anne’s story is told in classrooms and parliaments, on TV screens and policy tables. She has become not just a champion of sport, but a symbol of what is possible when compassion meets courage, and when society chooses inclusion over ignorance.

Her race is far from over. With every turn of her wheels, Anne continues to push humanity toward a world where disability is not destiny  and no child, anywhere, is ever told they are a curse.

Polio may now be 99% eradicated globally, but the fight is not over. According to WHO, just two countries  Afghanistan and Pakistan still report endemic cases. And for the millions of survivors worldwide, the struggle is not only to walk again, but to live with dignity, opportunity, and equality.