Discovery Coast club and Gladstone club support World Polio Day with World’s Greatest Meal to raise $1,100
30 members of Discovery Coast Rotary and the Rotary Club of Gladstone recently met at The Miriam Vale Hotel for a combined social meeting as part of the World’s Greatest Meal where all money raised goes towards the fight against Polio. There were several speakers on the night, some with harrowing childhood memories, others of their volunteering work with Rotary international overseas where they administered the polio Sabin vaccine to children.
There are now only 2 countries in the world where polio is endemic and they are Pakistan and Afghanistan. This year saw the whole of Africa declared polio free by the UN.
Polio eradication has been Rotary’s major global project. It was 1979 when Rotary first made efforts to eradicate Polio on a widespread scale. “When Rotary International launched PolioPlus in 1985, more than 125 countries were still polio endemic, and at least a thousand children were paralysed every day” said United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at a worldwide Rotary Convention in 2009.
In 1985 there were over 350,000 cases of polio worldwide and the prognosis for many sufferers was a term of illness plagued by muscle weakness, breathing difficulties, fatigue, pain or even paralysis.
Since then, Rotary has been responsible for the immunisation of over 2 billion children worldwide. With Rotary’s work providing the catalyst for the establishment of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) in 1988, Rotary’s work alongside UNICEF, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and partners like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has led a campaign providing a total of more than 10 billion doses of the Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) worldwide.
The latest statistics from RI:
· Pakistan - No new Polio cases reported this week.Seventy-nine Polio cases reported in 2020. The most recent case had an onset of paralysis on 10/03/20. Pakistan reported 147 Wild Polio cases in 2019. Eighteen Polio-Positive Environmental Samples were reported this week in Pakistan.
· Afghanistan - No new Polio cases reported this past week. Fifty-three Polio cases reported in 2020. The most recent cases had an onset of paralysis on 9/13/20. Afghanistan reported twenty-nine Wild Polio cases in 2019. Two Polio-Positive Environmental Samples were reported this week in Afghanistan.
LET’S JOIN TOGETHER TO ERADICATE POLIO.