Carole Berry – End Polio Now

October 24^th was World Polio Day and a tremendous success rate of 99.9% to end polio has been accomplished. In 1985 there were more than 125 polio endemic countries. The disease killed or crippled more than 1000 people a day, most of them children.

 

Rotary launched PolioPlus that year, a multimillion dollar campaign to immunize the world’s children against polio.

 

What is PolioPlus? PolioPlus involves negotiations with the Government, Fundraising, Environmental surveillance labs. There are 147 of these labs. worldwide that monitor infectious diseases. Infrastructure, involving distribution channels, mass vaccinations. Technology is used to track everything such as virus, volunteers. There is also the importance of volunteers’ I.D. and the set up and mobilization of communities to do mass vaccinations and the education of government for routine vaccinations.

 

We should be proud of our work, A WORLD WITHOUT POLIO. However, our work is not done as yet. We still need to vaccinate children in Africa.

According to Robert Scott, past RI President, we are working to ensure that the polio virus will be found only in history books and not our children.