World Polio Day on Saturday, October 24, commemorates a medical achievement of the highest level.
The polio epidemic was occurring here in the USA and around the world during the latter half of the 20th century.
How bad was it? Well, in the 1980s, there were 1,000 new cases of this crippling disease every day internationally.
And so, in 1985, Rotary International took the lead role in an unimaginable task: Rotary declared war on polio.
Rotary International has been and continues to be the leading private sector organization involved in the fight. Over the past four decades, members of the 40,000+ Rotary Clubs here in the USA and abroad have contributed $2.9 billion for polio vaccine and other necessary eradication resources.
Rotary’s first polio project was to vaccinate children in the Philippines in 1979. Inspired by that successful vaccination campaign, Rotary went on to become a founding partner of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in 1988, which has reduced polio cases around the world by 99.9 percent.
Since then, Rotary International and its partners, the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have banded together in the Global Polio Initiative to eradicate polio as a world imperative. Additionally, the Gates Foundation and many governments including the United States have generously provided hundreds of millions of dollars of support for this effort.
The job is almost finished. The number of cases of polio worldwide is down by 99.9 percent (only still endemic in Pakistan and Afghanistan). However, polio knows no borders and carriers frequently move from one country to another. The virus can therefore reappear in previously polio-free countries. That is why Rotary International and its partners have been relentless in this fight. If polio isn’t eradicated, the world will continue to live under the threat of this disease and millions of children could once again be paralyzed if this effort is not followed to completion.
Not surprisingly, Rotary has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts.
Former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has offered this summary of Rotary’s Polio Eradication effort: “Rotary has accomplished so much in the face of extraordinary challenges. It has met financial goals and overcome conflict and lack of security in many countries and conquered cultural barriers. … When the final chapter on polio eradication is finally written, it will tell of one of the most spectacular success stories ever in public health and highlight Rotary’s remarkable service to humanity.”
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Joseph Batory has been a member of Rotary for the past 40 years, initially in the Upper Darby Rotary Club and more recently for 20+ years in the Rotary Club of Philadelphia. He has been actively involved in a myriad of humanitarian outreach efforts by his Rotary Clubs and has received Rotary International’s highest recognition for “Service Above Self.”
