Polio: Artist Discharged to Explore the World after 43 Years on Sick Bed

Adeyinka Olaiya, Sao Paulo, Brazil/

A Polio victim from age one, 44-year-old Eliana Zagui, lost the total movement of her body and could only move her neck and mouth.

But against all odds, Eliana has become a foremost Artist – painter and illustrator, who uses her mouth to handle the tools of her trade.

She has staged several exhibitions of arts, making exceptional paintings with brushes in her mouth on the sick bed.

Last December, when Eliana visited members of her family for the first time she began to seek for a wider perspective of life and the doctors couldn’t keep her down anymore. She was finally discharged to live her normal life after 43 years on the hospital bed.

“I am an Artist, a writer and an idealist, I need the living world to express myself through my arts,” she said.

Eliana’s struggle started when she was admitted to a teaching hospital, somewhere around the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil over 43 years ago after she had undergone a series of exams in the hospital when she was just 1 year and 9 months old.

Since the teaching hospital discovered the necessity of her using an electronic device to remain alive while she was just a year old, doctors decided to make the hospital her residence for 43 years.

In all those years, Eliana went through several medical treatments on the sick bed.

According to the hospitals spokesman, Eliana was admitted all these years in the hospital after the court injunction which ordered the facility to take responsibility of a full treatment of the patient since the outburst of Polio in 1976 in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Departing the hospital, Eliana congratulated the officials for all the medical assistance throughout her years of treatment. She has also promised to donate her paintings for charity causes in the nearest future.

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