On October 24th, the world will celebrate World Polio Day. This recognition was established by Rotary International to commemorate the birth of Jonas Salk, the medical researcher who led the first team to develop a vaccine against polio. He developed the inactivated polio virus vaccine which came into use in 1955. Albert Sabine then developed the oral vaccine that came into use in 1961.
Rotary has been working to eradicate polio for more than 35 years. As a founding partner of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, Rotary and its partners have reduced polio cases by more than 99.99 percent since the first project to vaccinate children in the Philippines in 1979. At that time more than 125 countries were endemic and more than 350000 children a year succumbed to the scourge of this horrible disease. Incredible progress has been made thanks to Rotary International, the World Health Organization and the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Of the three wild polio viruses two have been eradicated. Recently a new oral vaccine has been developed that does not mutate as easily and therefore there are fewer cases of vaccine derived polio.
Currently only two countries have the wild Polio virus, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Rotary and its partners continue to work in these countries once and for all to eradicate the scourge of this horrible disease. We cannot stop!
The infrastructure created by Rotary and its partners has not only been used for the distribution of the polio vaccine, but has also been used to help eradicate other chronic diseases such as Measles, Ebola and most recently Covid-19.
The BEL Rotary Club has been a proud partner and contributor to this world wide effort. Rotarians Brian and Dorothy Menton have travelled to Nigeria and Pakistan to deliver the lifesaving drops to children in rural and often unsafe areas. In their words “No child should get Polio, there is a vaccine. We just need to get it to the children”.