11/20/24: Today, our guest speaker was fellow Rotarian Glen Garlick from the Libertyville Club. His topic: the ongoing need to fund the eradication of polio.
The eradication of polio is one of Rotary's longest standing and most significant efforts. Along with our partners, we have helped immunize more than 2.5 billion children against polio in 122 countries. We have reduced polio cases by 99.9 percent worldwide and we won't stop until we end the disease for good.
A brief history:
- 1979: Rotary Clubs in the Philippines begin the fight against polio with a multi-year project to immunize 6 million children in the Philippines.
- 1985: Rotary International launches PolioPlus, the first and largest internationally coordinated private-sector support of a public health initiative, with an initial fundraising target of US$120 million.
- 1988: Rotary International and the World Health Organization launch the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. There were an estimated 350,000 cases of polio in 125 countries.
- 1994: The International Commission for the Certification of Poliomyelitis Eradication announces that polio has been eliminated from the Americas.
- 1995: Health workers and volunteers immunize 165 million children in China and India in 1 week.
- 2000: A record 550 million children – almost 10% of the world's population – receive the oral polio vaccine. The Western Pacific region, spanning from Australia to China, is declared polio-free.
- 2003: Six countries remain polio-endemic – Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan.
- 2006: The number of polio-endemic countries drops to 4 - Afghanistan, India, Nigeria, Pakistan.
- 2009: Rotary's overall contribution to the eradication effort nears $800 million. In January, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation pledges $355 million and issues Rotary a challenge grant of $200 million.
- 2012: India surpasses 1 year without a recorded case of polio and is removed from the list of countries where polio is endemic.
- 2024: Two countries remain polio-endemic: Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Our goal:
- Permanently interrupt transmission of all poliovirus in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
- Stop the transmission of variant poliovirus type 2 and prevent outbreaks in polio-free regions. (Poliovirus type 2 is a form of poliovirus that was declared eradicated in 2015. However, there have been recent outbreaks of a related form of this poliovirus, called circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2, which is spread through the fecal-oral route, contaminated food or water, or from person to person.)
Our current role: fundraising and raising awareness