By Abdul Qadir Qureshi
(Pakistan
News & Features Services)
Rotary International will highlight progress in the global
effort to end polio on the occasion of the annual World Polio Day to be
observed on October 24.
“World Polio Day 2013 provides a golden opportunity for
Rotary and its partners to build public support for the historic final push now
underway to wipe out this disabling viral disease once and for all,” Rotary
International’s Pakistan PolioPlus Chair, Aziz Memon, remarked.
“In Chicago , where the
humanitarian service organization was founded in 1905, Rotary and Northwestern University
The confirmed panelists included Dr Bruce Aylward, the
world’s leading expert on polio eradication and assistant director-general for
polio, emergencies and country collaboration at the World Health Organization;
Dr. Robert Murphy, director of Northwestern
University Nigeria , one of only three
countries where the wild poliovirus has never been stopped.
Also invited is Emmy award-winning actress Archie Panjabi,
one of Rotary’s End Polio Now celebrity ambassadors. In 2012, Panjabi helped
Rotary volunteers immunize children in India , where she spent part of her
childhood. Once considered the nation facing the most serious challenges to
eradication, India
was removed from the polio-endemic list in January 2012. If Panjabi is unable
to attend in person, the Chicago program will
include exclusive video of her work in India .
“This year, World Polio Day fundraisers will have greater
impact due to the new fundraising campaign, End Polio Now: Make History Today,
recently launched by Rotary and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The
Gates Foundation will match two for one every new dollar Rotary commits to
polio eradication up to US$35 million per year through 2018,” Aziz Memon
revealed.
“World Polio Day provides an important and timely
opportunity for us to let the world know that every dollar contributed to
Rotary for polio eradication will work three times as hard,” Dr Robert S.
Scott, MD, Chair of Rotary’s PolioPlus programme, observed in his message.
“Rotary invites everyone, private citizens, businesses,
non-profits, to join us in this historic effort. Only one other human disease
(smallpox) has ever been beaten. Now is our best chance ever to make polio the
second,” he stressed.
Rotary clubs in every region of the world have planned an
array of activities on or leading up to World Polio Day.
Rotary clubs in India planned a nationwide series
of outdoor illuminations carrying Rotary’s “End Polio Now” message on World
Polio Day. In January, India
will celebrate three years of no new polio cases, a huge milestone for a country
once considered to harbor the most serious challenges to eradication.
Scores of Rotary clubs worldwide working with local schools
to organize Purple Clothes Days encouraged each student to wear a purple item
of clothing and make a small donation to Rotary’s polio eradication program.
The concept began with Rotary clubs in England ,
inspired by the purple dye that health workers in polio-affected countries
place on children’s pinky fingers to show they have received the oral polio
vaccine. Similarly, many Rotary clubs in England ,
Kenya
and elsewhere are selling fabric “purple crocus” lapel pins in support of polio
eradication.
In Kenya ,
Rotary clubs will work with partnering agencies and the national government to
use World Polio Day to launch the next round of national polio immunization
activities in early November, a campaign deemed critical due to the recent
outbreak of imported cases throughout the Horn of Africa.
Rotary clubs in Lagos ,
Nigeria Nigeria ’s first-ever bike-a-thon.
In partnership with UNICEF, Rotary clubs in Pakistan ,
another polio-endemic country, on World Polio Day will begin distributing 5,000
copies of a 16-page “speaking book” that health workers and parents can use to
teach young children the importance of polio vaccinations and basic hygiene.
The audio version of the text is in the regional languages of Urdu and Pashto.
In Spain
and Portugal ,
Rotary clubs are generating public support for polio eradication via the
crowd-speaking platform, Thunderclap, in a campaign that concludes on World
Polio Day.
Historically, Rotary had helped launch the Global Polio
Eradication Initiative with the WHO, UNICEF, and the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention. Since then, Rotary club members worldwide have
contributed more than $1.2 billion and countless volunteer hours to the polio
eradication effort.
Overall, the annual number of new polio cases has plummeted
by more than 99 percent since the 1980s, when polio infected about 350,000
children a year. Only 223 new cases were recorded for all of 2012. More than
two billion children have been immunized in 122 countries, preventing five
million cases of paralysis and 250,000 deaths. Polio today remains endemic in
only three countries, Afghanistan ,
Nigeria and Pakistan ,
although “imported” cases in previously polio-free areas, such as the Horn of
Africa, will continue to occur until the virus is finally stopped in the
endemic countries.
Rotary is a global network of volunteer leaders dedicated to
tackling the world’s most pressing humanitarian challenges. Rotary’s 1.2
million members hail from more than 200 countries and geographical areas. Their
work improves lives at both the local and international levels, from helping
families in need in their own communities to working toward a polio-free world.
