World Polio Day

Thanks to the work of Rotary and our partners in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), polio cases have been reduced by 99.9% worldwide since 1988. However, it is critical for us to continue our efforts to eradicate the polio for good because one child paralyzed by this vaccine-preventable disease is one child too many.

If polio is not fully eradicated and the work of the GPEI is halted, we could see a global resurgence of the disease with as many as 200,000 new paralytic cases each year over the next 10 years, all over the world.

Polio anywhere is a threat to children everywhere. As we get closer to ending polio, we need to increase disease detection, also known as surveillance, to ensure the virus is truly gone from every corner of the world. Given that only one in 200 cases of polio results in paralysis, we rely on the program's extensive surveillance and laboratory network to tell us where polio does (and does not) exist.