Polio Eradication – August 2022
Norb Murray, District 5400 PolioPlus Chair
Rotary Club of Boise Southwest
Norbmurray1942@gmail.com
THE NEWS
For the new Rotary year 2022-23 I will be the PolioPlus Chair. As Rotarians and District 5400 our task is to help fund and create awareness about polio eradication. District 5400 has more than met the challenge and I have faith that we will continue to do so until every last child is polio free. I will bring you some interesting facts and stories about polio during the year and I have two polio programs available to present to a meeting of your club. I am working on a video version to save on gas.
The Numbers (July 19, 2022): Wild Polio Virus cases – 13: 1 in Afghanistan, 11 in Pakistan (all in one NW province and suspected to be related to each other) and 1 in Mozambique. The case in Mozambique was traced back to Afghanistan so it does not affect Africa’s polio free certification.
A case of paralytic polio in an unvaccinated individual in Rockland County, New York. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are coordinating with New York State health authorities on their investigation. Initial sequencing confirmed by CDC indicates that the case is circulating vaccine derived polio virus (cVDPV) linked to an environmental surveillance sample found in New York and Israel. It occurred in an area that has a low vaccination rate. It demonstrates how easily the polio virus can travel the world if not stopped.
I LOVE A PARADE
On January 1, 1986, in the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, Rotary International announced to the world its ambitious program to immunize the children of the world against polio. It wasn’t the fanciest of the more than 100 floats in the parade. But it evoked a response among viewers. 126+ million viewers saw the message that Rotary was launching an all-out, global war on a disease that was killing or crippling 1000 people a day. “Good luck Rotary!” “Keep up the good work” cheered spectators along the route.
The float centered an abandoned wheelchair, symbolic of no child being disabled by polio. A “Stop Polio” symbol, a red circle with a diagonal slash across the word POLIO, symbolized the float’s theme. Exchange students in national dress danced around a tree atop which a banner flew with the date 2005, Rotary’s centennial year and the target date for a polio-free world.
2005 came and went. Rotarians celebrated 100 years of service, however polio was still with us. At the 2005 International Assembly in Anaheim President-Elect Carl Wilhelm-Stenhammar remarked that he had traveled the world and heard that Rotarians were tired of PolioPlus and anxious to move on. When Rotary had first proposed the idea of eradicating polio to the World Health Organization 20 years earlier Rotary had been looked on as “just a service organization” and would soon get tired of it and move on. What we did was not to move on but to increase efforts, develop effective new strategies and find new sources of funding.
Although it has become a cliché, “this close” still has truth and meaning. We are almost to that day we can truly say we have accomplished our goal of a polio-free world. It won’t be easy, but it can and will be done. In the words of the late Past RI President Bhichai Rattakul: “Like all of you, I dream of a Polio-free world - and making good on the promise that we have made to the children of this world.” (Brisbane, Australia, June 2003)
The following is a summary of what has been accomplished to date:
· Since 1988 3 billion children have been immunized preventing 20 million cases of polio
· 650,000 cases of polio have been prevented each year
· Global eradication has saved more than $27 billion in health care since 1988 and expects to save $14 billion more by 2050
· Rotary, Rotarians and Rotaractors have contributed $2.19 billion to the polio eradication effort
· The Global Polio Laboratory Network of 146 laboratories was established in 1990. In addition to being able to establish if a case is polio or not the labs spend 30 percent of the time providing surveillance for other diseases such as dengue, Ebola and Zika
· There have been no cases outside the two endemic countries (Afghanistan and Pakistan) since 2014
· The continent of Africa was certified polio free in 2020. Just one region remains.
· The poliovirus is continuously being confined to smaller areas
· Just one (of the original three) type of the poliovirus remains
· A new vaccine has been introduced which will effectively reduce the number of vaccine derived cases
· The G20 has renewed support to polio eradication
· The Taliban health minister in Afghanistan has declared they support polio eradication efforts
· Polio health workers in Pakistan and Afghanistan provided assistance during the COVID pandemic and with aid to recent earthquake victims in Afghanistan