After 25 years of hard work, Rotary and its partners are on the brink of eradicating this tenacious disease, but a strong push is needed now to root it out once and for all. It is a window of opportunity of historic proportions.
Reaching the ultimate goal of a polio-free world presents ongoing challenges, not the least of which is a hundreds of million dollar funding gap. Of course, Rotary alone can't fill this gap, but continued Rotarian advocacy for government support can help enormously.
As long as polio threatens even one child anywhere in the world, children everywhere remain at risk. The stakes are that high.
Rotary Fights to End Polio Now from Rotary International on Vimeo.
* Polio can cause paralysis and sometimes death. Because there is no cure for polio, the best protection is prevention.
What exactly is Polio?
* A crippling and potentially fatal infectious disease, polio (poliomyelitis) still strikes children mainly under the age of five in countries in Asia and Africa.
* For as little as US$0.60 worth of vaccine, a child can be protected against this crippling disease for life.
* It can cause paralysis within hours, and polio paralysis is almost always irreversible.
* In the most severe cases, polio attacks the motor neurons of the brain stem, causing breathing difficulty or even death.
* Historically, polio has been the world’s greatest cause of disability.
If polio is not eradicated, the world will continue to live under the threat of the disease. More than 10 million children will be paralyzed in the next 40 years if the world fails to capitalize on its US$9 billion global investment in eradication.
Rotary’s PolioPlus Program Fact Sheet (PDF)