Stories

Get ready for World Polio Day on 24 October by promoting awareness, raising funds, and planning club events. This year, calling attention to our efforts to eradicate polio is as important as ever.

We’ve shown that we can defeat this devastating disease, as five out of six regions are now free of wild poliovirus — but the fight is not over. Wild polio still paralyzes children in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As long as polio exists anywhere, it remains a threat everywhere.

This World Polio Day, let’s take action to help end polio for good. Download the toolkit for resources to help you host a virtual event for your community, share information over social media, contact your local media, and more. Don’t forget to register your event on EndPolio.org. New this year: Clubs and members that register their events will receive early access to the downloadable World Polio Day program.

Rotary clubs in Canada are sharing their model for holding a successful online event for World Polio Day. Using local education and technology resources, community involvement, and compelling guest speakers, 10 clubs in District 7070, Ontario, Canada, began collaborating in 2018 to host a creative and meaningful livestream event each year. Get inspiration from their experience to plan and promote your club’s virtual outreach for World Polio Day. 

Rotary members who are survivors of polio are talking about their experiences and the parallels to the COVID-19 pandemic. Rotary member Shirley Griffin reflects on having polio as a child in an interview with AARP.org, and discusses her efforts with Rotary to raise funds and administer vaccines in the fight to end polio.

A media trip to India with Rotary for a National Immunization Day program inspired this article in Forbes that covers India’s efforts to mobilize country-wide vaccinations. The piece then explores the similarities and differences between polio and COVID-19, with interviews from polio survivor Ann Lee Hussey, Rotary member and past district governor, and Peter Salk, president of the Jonas Salk Legacy Foundation and infectious disease professor at the University of Pittsburgh. His father Dr. Jonas Salk developed one of the two polio vaccines.

Despite immense challenges, India was declared wild polio-free in 2014. In a column that appears on the India-based news platform The Quint, Rotary’s India National PolioPlus Committee Chair Deepak Kapur explains what it took to achieve that success in eradicating wild poliovirus, including mass vaccination campaigns organized by thousands of Rotary clubs across India. Kapur also emphasizes the need to remain dedicated to global polio eradication so that children stay protected from polio and other diseases.

Rotary is committed to raising $50 million per year to end polio, with every dollar matched with two additional dollars from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Thanks to our generous members and donors, we reached our 2019-20 PolioPlus fundraising goal.

We need your continued help to keep raising $50 million annually. With every contribution multiplied, your donation goes even further to help us reach children in every part of the world with a polio vaccine as well as other life-saving vaccines and health care.