Anne Wafula Strike: How the Para-athlete overcame adversity to inspire others

The latest episode of the Gamechangers podcast featured the inspirational para-athlete Anne Wafula Strike. 

Born in Kenya, she contracted polio at the age of two, resulting in paralysis of her lower body. She arrived in the UK in April 2000, before being introduced to wheelchair racing two years later. 

In 2004, Wafula Strike became the first Kenyan wheelchair racer to represent her country at the Paralympics in Athens and later became a member of Team GB. 

Outside of athletics, the renowned wheelchair racer is also an author, speaker, disability rights campaigner and a powerful advocate for the less fortunate in society. 

For her services to disability sport and charity, she was awarded an MBE and was named as a special envoy to the Commonwealth in 2020. 

In a fascinating discussion with Gamechangers host Sue Anstiss, Wafula Strike discussed the struggles she overcame in her own life and how one can use their voice to campaign for the rights of others in society. 

While Wafula Strike was born a “very normal, healthy” child, after two and a half years she was suddenly struck down by an illness unknown to those around her at the time. 

“The villagers had perceptions of what had made me ill,” she said. “Some thought, ‘Oh, she’s just been cursed.’ Others were like, ‘No, you know what, this is witchcraft.’ And this was all because of a lack of knowledge of what was really affecting me.” 

It wasn’t until she went to Kenya’s capital city of Nairobi with her father that the former wheelchair racer discovered she had polio. The infectious disease is caused by the poliovirus which affects the central nervous system and can result in muscle weakness and flaccid paralysis. 

Yet, despite knowing the cause of her disease, Wafula