Milestone reached in anti polio campaign

Milestone reached in anti polio campaign

Rotary club members worldwide are cautiously celebrating a major milestone in the global effort to eradicate polio.

India, until recently an epicenter of the wild poliovirus, has gone one year without recording a new case of the crippling, sometimes fatal, disease.

New Zealand has regularly sent parties of Rotarians to India to help local Rotary clubs carry out immunization programmes, part of Rotary’s international End Polio Now campaign.

“Kiwis have been front and centre of the efforts to eliminate this terrible disease. Although we have not had any new cases in New Zealand for many years, thanks to mass immunisation campaigns in the 1950s and 1960s, there are still many people alive who remember cases of polio, and there is still polio survivors groups active in New Zealand, says Howard Tong, Rotary’s regional public image co-ordinator.

Internationally the campaign is backed by the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the United States Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. Since 1988 this campaign has also been backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and many other companies and governments.

Worldwide Rotary clubs have raised one point two billion US dollars since 1985 to fight polio.

India’s last reported case was a two-year-old girl in West Bengal State on 13 January 2011. The country recorded 42 cases in 2010, and 741 in 2009.

The history of the battle to eliminate polio is an inspiriting one. Rotary’s involvement began in 1979 when Rotary Iinternational launched the first Polio eradication ‘trial’ in the Philippines.

Rotary raised US$247 million by way of an international fund raising campaign to launch the project in 1985. Following the success of this massive fund raising effort - and the trial immunisation project in the Philippines - the World Health Organisation, UNICEF and the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (USA) came on board in 1988.

“The achievement of a polio-free India for a full year is a significant step towards a polio-free world -- an example as to what can be accomplished no matter what problems need to be overcome,” says Robert S. Scott, chair of Rotary’s International PolioPlus Committee.

Deepak Kapur, chair of the India PolioPlus Committee, also credits the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare for its commitment to ending polio. To date, the Indian government has spent more than US$1.2 billion on domestic polio eradication activities.

“Government support is crucial if we are to defeat polio, and we are fortunate that our government is our biggest advocate in this effort,” Kapur says.

“Marching ahead, the goal is to sustain this momentum,” he adds, describing as potentially “decisive” the upcoming immunization rounds this month and in February and March.

A New Zealander, Bill Boyd, a former Rotary International President, now heads the Rotary Foundation, Rotary’s charity, which co-ordinates the international fundraising efforts.

There’s lots more information at these sites

• Learn about Rotary's efforts to eradicate polio
•
• See a video about what it takes to eradicate polio
•
• Help End Polio Now
•
ends

© Scoop Media