End Polio Now

 

 

In 1985, there were more than 125 polio endemic countries. The disease killed or crippled more than 1,000 people a day, most of them children.

 

Rotary launched PolioPlus that year, a multimillion-dollar campaign to immunize the world's children against polio. In 1988, when the World Health Assembly resolved to wipe out the disease that had killed and paralyzed people for 5,000 years, Rotary immediately offered to be part of the eradication initiative. Rotarians continue, steadfastly committed to a polio-free world.

 

Since then, Rotary and its partners - the World Health Organization, UNICEF, The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and more recently the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation - have staunchly led the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. Rotary has helped immunize more than 2.5 billion children, mobilized public support for ending polio, contributed over $1 billion to the global polio eradication effort, and helped solicit financial support from donor governments resulting in over $9 billion in contribution.

 

 

Seven million children have escaped the threat of polio because of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. Reported polio cases have dropped 99 percent - from 350,000 in 1988 to fewer than 700 a year today. Polio remains endemic in only three countries: Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan. Due to the efforts of Rotary and its global partners, the world is on the threshold of eradicating the wild poliovirus.

 

 

Tremendous progress has been made, but the world is not yet polio-free. The poliovirus knows no borders and can spread from an endemic country into polio-free areas. No child is safe from this crippling, sometimes fatal, disease as long as one case of polio remains in the world. The last 1 percent of polio cases are the most difficult to prevent because the virus lingers in some of the hardest-to-reach areas on earth. Increased support from governments of the world, and donor and polio-affected countries, is essential to the success of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.

 

 

Rotary and its partners are "this close" to making polio the second human disease - after smallpox - to be eradicated. We have an unprecedented opportunity to ensure that no child will ever again be paralyzed by or dies from polio. Now is the time to act - with your help, polio will be defeated.