On 25 August the World Health Organisation declared that Africa was certified as officially free of the Wild Polio virus four years after the last recorded case in Nigeria. 
This has been reported worldwide, and is welcome news at a time when the planet is in the grips of a Pandemic that is disrupting lives in an unprecedented way, but also is testimony to the effort of Rotarians to rid the world of this crippling disease.
In an email to all Rotarians RI President Holger Knaack said the following:
Rotary members have played an invaluable role in the effort to rid the African region of wild polio. We should be proud of all the hard work that we’ve done to eliminate the wild poliovirus throughout Africa and in nearly every country in the world. 

This progress is the result of a decades-long effort across
the 47 countries of the African region. It has involved millions of health workers traveling by foot, boat, bike and bus, innovative strategies to vaccinate children amid conflict and insecurity, and a huge disease surveillance network to test cases of paralysis and check sewage for the virus. 

Over the last two decades, countless Rotary members in countries across the African region and around the world have worked together to raise funds, immunize children, advocate with local and national leaders, and raise awareness about the importance of vaccination, enabling the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) to effectively respond to and stop polio outbreaks. 

This milestone is an incredible public health achievement for Rotary members, the African region, and our GPEI partners, and a huge step forward on the road to global polio eradication. But we still have important work to do in order to eradicate wild polio in the last two endemic countries.
 
 
The Economist reported the news as following and also below are links to reports in My Rotary and the NZ Herald.
 
Unfinished Business : Polio Eradication
An independent health commission originally appointed by the World Health Organisation is today expected to declare that Africa has eradicated polio. This, however, does not mean the disease has stopped paralysing African children. The polio virus is now endemic in only two countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan. But more than 20 countries, mostly in Africa, have harmful mutations of the virus in the oral polio vaccine. The vaccine-virus, a neutered version of the original bug, is excreted for a time after oral vaccination. It can be picked up—and passed on further—by anyone who is not vaccinated. If this chain of transmission lasts for more than a year, the vaccine-virus can mutate its way into a paralysing form. The disruption to routine childhood vaccination in developing countries caused by the covid pandemic is creating fertile ground for such mutations—and for the spread of the virus from Pakistan and Afghanistan. The end of polio may not be as close as it seems.
 
 
 
 
The fight is not over with cases of Polio still being reported in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but as Rotarians we are up for this, and by supporting the Ride the Train event on 23 October we will take one more step towards Ending Polio.