In 1985 Rotary International started a campaign to immunise the children of the world against polio. Rotary is a spearheading partner in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (the largest public health initiative the world has ever known) that has spanned 200 counties, utilised 20 million volunteers, immunised over 2 billion children, probably spared 5 million from disability and averted more than a million deaths.
Rotarians in polio-free countries actively partner with Rotarians in polio endemic and high risk countries to help provide vaccines, the essential social mobilisation and surveillance.
In December 2007, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded the Rotary Foundation a challenge gift of US$100 Million.
Rotary Districts are challenged to raise an equivalent amount over the three years to December 2010. In effect this is a District contribution equivalent to $1,000 per Rotary Club in each of the three years.
Rotary’s primary responsibilities include fundraising, advocacy, and volunteer recruitment. To date, Rotary has contributed nearly $700 million to the eradication effort, an amount that will grow to more than $850 million by the time the world is certified polio-free.
With nearly 33,000 clubs in over 200 countries and geographical areas, Rotary reaches out to national governments worldwide to generate crucial financial and technical support for polio eradication. Since 1995, the advocacy efforts of Rotary and its partners have helped raise more than $3 billion in vital funding from donor governments.
Over the years, Rotary club members have volunteered their time and personal resources to reach more than two billion children in 122 countries with the oral polio vaccine.
Thanks to Rotary and its partners, the number of polio cases has been slashed by more than 99 percent, preventing five million instances of childhood paralysis and 250,000 deaths. When Rotary began its eradication work, polio infected more than 350,000 children annually. In 2007, fewer than 2,000 cases were reported worldwide.
But the polio cases represented by that final 1 percent will be the most difficult and expensive to prevent for a variety of reasons, including geographical isolation, worker fatigue, armed conflict, and cultural barriers.
That’s why it’s so important to generate the funding needed to finish the job. To ease up now would be to invite a polio resurgence that would condemn millions of children to lifelong paralysis in the years ahead.
The bottom line is this: As long as polio threatens even one child anywhere in the world, all children – wherever they live – remain at risk.
