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 POLIO PLUS that year, a multi-million dollar campaign to immunize the world’s children against polio. 

In 1988 the World Health Assembly resolved to wipe out the disease that had killed and paralysed people for thousands of years.  

Since then Rotary and its partners, the World Health Organisation, UNICEF and more recently, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have led the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.  

Rotary has helped immunise more than 2.5 billion children, contributed over  $1 billion to the global polio eradication effort, and helped solicit financial support from donor governments, resulting in over $9 billion in contributions.

More than one million Rotarians have contributed to the success of the Polio eradication effort over that time.

Since then reported polio cases have dropped 99 per cent – from 350,000 in 1988 to fewer than 700 a year today. 

Polio remains endemic in only three countries, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria. 

Tremendous progress has been made but the world is not yet polio free. 

No child is safe from this crippling, sometimes fatal disease as long as one case of polio remains in the world.

The last one per cent of polio cases are the most difficult to prevent because the virus lingers in some of the hardest to reach areas on earth.

Rotary and its partners are ‘this close’ to making polio the second human disease, after smallpox, to be eradicated.  

With Ebola now threatening, now is the time to act.  

With our help, polio will be wiped out.

• Come and join our Rotary Club on Friday morning from 7am to 9am and purchase a barbecue breakfast to help to end polio now.