ROLLINSFORD — Ann Lee Hussey knows just how indiscriminate polio can be.

She has seen it before on the streets of India, where she headed again yesterday with a group of American Rotarians to help immunize children against the paralyzing disease.

Hussey, who, along with her husband, Michael Nazemetz, owns the Village Veterinary Clinic in Rollinsford, witnessed the devastating affects of polio on scores of crippled beggars in Delhi and in the hospitals where doctors attempted to undo the twisted damage a 50 cent vaccine could have prevented.

The vaccine was approved in the United States the same year that Hussey was struck by the devastating disease.

It was 1955. Hussey was 17 months old. She hadn’t been walking for very long but when she developed a high fever and began stumbling, her mother knew immediately that her daughter had contracted the virus.

“There was a lot of it around at the time,” Hussey said of the disease that, within hours, can lead to paralysis, and, in some cases, death.

While some children escaped with mild symptoms — fever and vomiting — Hussey had the paralytic form. She wore braces in grade school and endured many operations.

It is understandable, then, that she refers to her involvement with Rotary’s PolioPlus program as personal.

Rotary International launched its polio eradication plan in 1988 in support of the Universal Child Immunization program. The goal was to raise $120 million — enough money, according to Rotary International’s fundraising campaign, to vaccinate the world’s 100 million newborns for five years.

In 1988, 350,000 cases of polio were reported in 125 countries. In 2001, the number had dropped more than 99 percent, to 600 cases. Only 10 countries were affected.

Today polio strikes primarily in parts Africa and India.

“It is rampant in India. The evidence is everywhere,” Hussey said. “When I was in India two years ago, you couldn’t walk down the street without seeing someone who had it, in all degrees. The poverty-stricken who had it were on the street begging. So many people had it.”

Some of the children she encountered had never seen a doctor. One woman was age 21 before she received medical treatment.

“The problem is, it can spread through a village so fast, before anyone realizes it, the whole village can be infected, then some child becomes paralyzed and they find out,” Hussey said.

That’s why she and the other 64 Rotarians from around the country — Hussey is the only one from New Hampshire — will spend part of their two weeks in Gajhaziabad, about 30 miles outside Delhi, “mopping up,” going village-to-village, door-to-door, making sure no child is missed.

They will join other Rotary members from around the world in giving the vaccines nationwide on National Immunization Day, attempting to reach every child in India under age five. The process will be repeated three more times so each child receives the necessary four doses.

“There are 2.5 million children in New Delhi alone,” Hussey said. “The biggest obstacle is religion. Last time, we learned the people had been told by their leaders that it was an attempt to sterilize their kids. But now they understand. They’ve come a long way.

“Still, it can be hard to find them, and then you have to convince them you aren’t harming them, you’re actually doing them good.”

In addition to dispensing vaccines, Hussey and her companions will visit a rehabilitation center and an orphanage. Each Rotary member is taking an extra suitcase full of clothes to give to the orphanage.

Money is needed not just for the vaccines and shipments but to send surveillance teams out into the countryside to find the children, Hussey said.

The Rotary Foundation is trying to raise $80 million by June 30, in part, to meet a matching grant of $25 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, with whom they, the World Bank and the United Nations Foundation have partnered to finance the eradication of polio globally.

Despite the affliction of polio, Hussey said she considers herself one of the fortunate ones.