By Susan Johnson, President Elect, Bronxville New York Rotary Club

Nov. 6, 2024: Polio, or poliomyelitis, is a paralyzing and potentially deadly infectious disease that most commonly affects children under the age of 5. The virus spreads from person to person, typically through contaminated water. It can attack the nervous system and may result in paralysis.

While only two countries – Afghanistan and Pakistan – remain endemic with wild polio virus, this could result in a global resurgence of the disease.

Although there is no cure, there is a safe and effective vaccine, one which Rotary and its partners use to immunize over 2.5 billion children worldwide.

To learn more about polio, please join the Bronxville Rotary Club on Thursday, November 7^th at the Bronxville Library at 7 PM for a talk by Mike McGovern, chair of the Rotary International PolioPlus Committee which leads the volunteer efforts of Rotary worldwide to conquer polio. The event is free and all are welcome.

Goal to Eradicate Polio

For more than 35 years, the eradication of polio has continued to be one of Rotary’s longest standing and most significant efforts. Achieving the goal to rid the world of this disease is within our reach. 

As a founding partner of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, which includes Rotary, UNICEF, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the World Health Organization (WHO), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and international governments, as well as with the support of many individuals throughout the world, Rotary has helped reduce polio cases by 99.9 percent since the first project to vaccinate children in the Philippines in 1979.

Rotary members have contributed more than $2.1 billion and countless volunteer hours to protect nearly 3 billion children in 122 countries from this paralyzing disease.

Looking at the numbers

-$3 is the average cost to fully protect a child against polio

-430 million children were vaccinated in 39 countries in 2017

-cost to conduct polio surveillance worldwide is $ 100 million

Every dollar Rotary commits to end polio is tripled, thanks to a matching agreement with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “The world’s progress in fighting polio might be one of the best kept secrets in global health,” said Bill Gates, co-founder and co-chair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

It’s crucial to continue working to keep all countries polio-free. If we learned anything from the COVID epidemic, it is that viral diseases have little regard for international borders.

If all eradication efforts stopped today, within 10 years polio could paralyze as many as 200,000 children each year.