When news broke that polio has been spreading in the UK for the first time in decades, Mark Esho's blood ran cold.
The 59-year-old is one of the last people to have contracted the virus in this country, and has described his ordeal as a "nightmare".
Mark was just five years old when he woke up paralysed from the neck down - and doctors said he had just a 10 per cent chance of survival.
He said he is praying no other child goes through what he endured.
More than half a century later, the businessman is still unable to move his left leg and right arm, but is able to walk with walking aids.
Mark, who runs his own internet company in Leicester, told the Mirror: "When I saw it, it sent a shiver through my spine, I thought the last thing we need is a polio outbreak.
"It's a horrible, horrible virus. I just pray that this doesn't happen to someone else."
When Mark was taken ill in 1967, polio was thought to have been eradicated in the UK.
He recalled: "Initially I'd gone to bed, I woke up in the middle of the night and walked to the toilet. I went back to bed, not knowing that was the last time I'd walk normally ever again.
"I had a massive fit and blacked out, and I woke up in hospital. I was paralysed from the neck down - it was the scariest thing you could go through.
"I had no idea what was going on, when they found out it was polio it caused a mass panic and I was put in isolation.
"It really can have a devastating impact on people's lives, it's a nightmare."
Little did he know that more turmoil was to come, as he was struck with post-polio syndrome in his mid-30s - a debilitating condition that forced him to give up work.
Mark was left with chronic fatigue and muscle pains that severely restricted his movement and turned his life upside down once again.
"You get used to living with a disability, but then polio syndrome hits you years later and it's like a double whammy," he stated.
Mark said: "Before Covid if someone asked me what happened, I'd say I'd been in a car accident, because how can you explain that a virus did this?
"Now I tell them I had polio, and people are a bit shocked."
Through childhood Mark endured cruel bullying at school, and said he learned later in life that his dad wanted to "abandon" him.
Mark, who set up internet firm 123 Ranking and who was awarded an MBE for his services to business this year, is now dedicated to ensuring those with disabilities are given opportunities denied to him when he was young.
He set up The Circle Foundation, an organisation which provides funding and support for disabled people to start their own businesses.
"I wasn't given a chance when I was younger, but I really want to make a difference," Mark - whose autobiography I can. I will was published in 2018 - said.
Health chiefs are scrambling to identify where the poliovirus is circulating, with the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) declaring a 'national incident' after it was detected in sewage works in London.
The samples were found at the London Beckton Sewage Works, which serves four million people in the capital.
As the Mirror reported, officials are desperately trying to narrow down the area where the virus - which can cause paralysis - is spreading.
Nicholas Grassly, Professor of Vaccine Epidemiology at Imperial College London, told The Mirror that it is crucial the virus doesn't take root.
He said: "Only one in a few hundred people are paralysed by polio, even in the unvaccinated population.
"So far there haven't been any cases of paralysis reported, but if the virus spreads it will eventually cause paralysis in an unvaccinated child.
"The priority now is to identify where it is."
