Polio Plus

Since 1985 Rotary members have helped immunize more than 2.5 billion children against polio.  Today, all but two countries,  Pakistan and Afghanistan, are free of polio.  As of June 2015, Rotary had committed more than $1.5 billion to global polio eradication to ensure that polio is eliminated in these last 2 countries, and that it does not return elsewhere.  In 2014 - 15, program awards, including PolioPlus Partners grants, totaled $123 million.  

 

Though the PolioPlus program started in 1985, Rotary began the fight against polio much earlier. In 1979 Rotary members began a multiyear program that immunized more than 6 million children in the Philippines against polio (Rotary.org).

Polio eradication became a top priority to Rotary after urging from Canseco, Dr. John Sever and Dr. Albert Sabin. Sever, a Rotary club leader, was the head of the infectious diseases branch of the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Diseases and Stroke at the National Institutes of Health. As the developer of the oral polio vaccine, Sabin gave the program a globally respected figure.

With their medical backgrounds, the three became crucial spokespeople for the program. Sabin argued against the traditional country-by-country approach advocated by the World Health Organization and others in the public health community. He called it “charity,” saying that “what’s needed are annual, well-organized — I repeat, the key is well-organized — community campaigns for mass vaccination of all children under four or five years of age.” Sever, Canseco, and others joined Sabin in advocating for mass immunization.

Sever believed his fellow Rotary members meet the challenge of polio eradication, calling them a “big international army of volunteers.” He also helped Rotary secure a special designation as a nongovernmental organization affiliated with WHO in order to shape the PolioPlus program (The Rotarian).

In its early years, PolioPlus was dedicated to fundraising for immunization efforts. In May 1988 Rotary announced that the campaign, which aimed to raise $120 million, had raised nearly $220 million in contributions and pledges. That same year, the World Health Assembly set a goal of worldwide polio eradication and launched the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) with Rotary as one of its partners. At the time, polio paralyzed more than 1,000 children worldwide every day and 125 countries were polio-endemic.

The GPEI partners, which also included WHO, UNICEF, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were able to boost world immunization levels from less than 50 percent in 1985 to over 80 percent in 1992. Just five years after the GPEI was founded, the 500 millionth child was immunized against polio. To further efforts, Rotary started the PolioPlus Partners program in 1995, to fund and support National Immunization Days in polio-endemic countries (The Rotarian).

In 2007 Rotary entered into a partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which issued Rotary a $100 million challenge grant to raise funds for polio eradication. This partnership continued to grow, and in 2013 the Gates Foundation offered to match Rotary’s contributions for polio eradication 2-to-1 for five years (up to $35 million per year).

PolioPlus is truly international. Rotary has 1.2 million members in nearly every country working together to end polio for good.