The fight against polio goes on (April 24)
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
Rotarians, including those in Madera, have been getting some bad news. After more than 20 years Rotarians have spent battling polio throughout the world, and beating it back to a point of near-eradication, the disease is crawling back for another fight.
The world’s Rotarians, along with the World Health Organization and other health organizations, have hurled $8.2 million at polio. A lot of that money was raised with community functions such as those put on every year by Madera’s two Rotary Clubs. When you go to a shrimp feed, for example, or to the Halloween ball, part of the money you spend may well go to put an end to polio.
A big sum — $700 million — came from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The success was more than dramatic. In 1988, there were some 350,000 cases of polio worldwide. By the year 2000, the number was less than 1,000. It was only going to take a few more years to kill polio for good. One last great effort was launched to eradicate polio in the few countries where it still existed.
But polio found allies, mostly in the leadership of countries such as Nigeria where vaccinations came almost to a halt after some religious leaders there told people polio vaccine would make little girls sterile. Unfortunately, you can’t vaccinate against half-witted attitudes.
But Rotarians and other polio fighters aren’t throwing in the towel. Dollar by dollar, they are still in the fight.
At the Sunrise Rotary Shrimp Feed earlier this month, Interact Club members were raising money to fight polio by selling cookies. Even relatively small efforts such as these eventually will conquer polio.
Madera Rotarians, along with Rotarians from throughout the country, have gone to foreign countries to help administer vaccine to children at risk.
It is a big task, but Rotarians and others aren’t afraid of it, thank goodness.
Thanks for a great editorial on Saturday, April 24, concerning the polio fight and the role of Rotarians around the world. I want to embellish the story a little and correct a couple of mistakes.
In 1985, Jonas Salk, the developer of the oral polio vaccine, challenged Rotarians at their International Convention to be leaders in an effort to vaccinate at least 85 percent of the children of the world against polio. A goal was set to raise $120 million by 1988. We raised $247 million.
Until that time the governments around the world had been shouldering the full cost of the efforts to spread the vaccine. The money raised by and through Rotary Clubs, along with a vast new network of Rotarian volunteers performing what we call National Immunization Days, has been successful in reducing the spread of the polio virus by 99 percent. On one weekend in India 120,000 volunteers inoculated 250 million children by giving them two small drops of the Salk Vaccine.
That last 1 percent uninnoculated has proven to be the toughest battle to win.
In 2000, Rotary International again embarked on an endeavor to raise $80 million through our “Eradicate Polio Campaign.” This is when the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation first partnered with Rotary by pledging $25 million to match the first $25 million we raised. Rotarians raised $138 million by 2003.
I was privileged to be a zone leader in this effort, responsible for 285 Rotary Clubs in the Western U.S. Those clubs raised over $4.5 million from 2001 to 2003. I was again privileged to be a zone coordinator for the Rotary Polio Plus Partners Program covering 24 Districts with over 1,100 Rotary Clubs in the Western U.S. including Hawaii, in our continuing efforts to not only eradicate polio but to give other vaccinations for childhood diseases at the same time.
The Gates Foundation issued a second challenge to Rotarians in 2006, donating $100 million with the stipulation that Rotarians would match it within three years. It took two years. Again in 2008, the Gates Foundation donated $155 million, bringing their total polio contributions to $280 million, challenging Rotarians to match $100 million within three years. The Gates Foundation has also donated vast amounts for the control of other diseases, such as malaria, AIDS, and whooping cough, to name a few.
At this time, Rotarians around the world have raised nearly $800 million to combat polio, and we won’t stop until we meet our pledge of “Fulfilling Our Promise — Eradicate Polio.” The U.S. Government is the largest funder of the polio eradication effort, having spent more than $8 billion since the vaccine was developed.
And yes, our local fund-raisers like the Shrimp Feed and Halloween Ball go to improve our communities with youth programs, parks and sports complexes, as well as helping out around the world wherever there is a need, such as the Haiti, Pakistan, and Chile earthquakes, Indonesian tsunami or clean water projects in various countries.
If anyone would like to make a tax deductable donation to The Rotary Foundation to help with any of these projects, contact any Rotarian.
In Rotary service,
J. Gordon Kennedy,
Past District Governor,
Rotary District 5220,
Madera Sunrise Rotary