February 13, 2008

This week, I wanted to bring attention to the fact that Rotary International and Rotary clubs around the world are commemorating the twentieth anniversary of Rotary's commitment to eradicate polio from the planet.  Twenty years ago, Rotary International (the global network of local Rotary clubs) joined the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and two agencies of the United Nations: the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in forming the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.   The program has proved to be enormously successful based on the fact that a 60% drop in polio cases occurred during 2007 and that there has been a 99% drop since the 1980's, when the initiative was started. As Rotary and its partners successfully educate people about the virus and supply oral vaccines to spread worldwide immunity, much financial support has poured in to help the project.  It is estimated that Rotarians alone have given $630 million to fighting polio, not counting the time and other personal contributions that are provided by members of Rotary every year.  Also, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations just recently gave a $100 million grant that Rotary International has promised to match.  

 

Despite the initiative's success and the fact that—for most of the developed world, at least—polio is no longer a public health threat, there still exist corners of the world where the virus is still a very real and daily cause of misery.  These are the places where Rotary and the other partners of the initiative plan to concentrate their efforts.  For example, in Afghanistan, India, Nigeria, Mali, and Pakistan, vaccination teams are trying their hardest to reach every possible individual, especially children, in the most rural and isolated locations.   These teams are made up of public health professionals, activists, and Rotary volunteers from places like the United States, Canada, and European nations.  This month's issue of the Rotarian magazine, includes many moving and inspirational photographs of children being immunized.  In particular, I found particularly striking the picture taken in Addis Ababa, Ethipia, where three smiling children hold up their stained fingers (indicating their having received the vaccine) in an image that recalls those of excited Iraqis whose fingers were stained during the country's first democratic elections since the fall of Saddam Hussein.  Adding to the power of the photograph was the fact that celebrity singer Beyoncé Knowles accompanied the group to Ethiopia.  In addition to her helping give the oral vaccines herself, her presence brings worldwide attention to the persisting hardships that polio inflicts on many people and to remind us all that with the help of Rotarians and other individuals everywhere, polio's days on earth will soon be numbered.