All members and guests who attended last week's meetig (26 Oct) participated in having a purple pinkie in honour of World Polio Day and to generate conversations.
Some facts you may not know:
- Rotary’s fight and focus on Polio began in 1979 with a multi-year project to immunize 6 million children in the Philippines.
- Six years later Rotary 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.
- By 1988, with an estimated 350,000 cases of polio in 125 countries, Rotary and the World Health Organization launched the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.
- After thirty years of Rotary commitment and close to $800million invested in eradication the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation pledged a further $555 million in support of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.
- In 2020 the World Health Organization certified the African region wild polio-free. Polio is now a concern in two countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Some facts you could use when asked:
- Today, 1.5 million are alive and 19 million people who would otherwise be paralysed by polio are walking.
- If all eradication efforts stopped today, within 10 years, polio could paralyse as many as 200,000 children each year.
- Polio eradication would be one of history's greatest public health achievements, with polio to become only the second human disease eliminated from the world.
You may have read in the Bulletin this week PP Robert has increased his fund raising goal in the walk to End Polio to $5000. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will add two dollars for every dollar raised. So the Rotary Foundation ends up with three times what we raised.
Thank you to Robert and to all that have supported his efforts.
Let’s continue the conversation.
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