end polio now

 

 

 

Thank you for your hospitality and welcoming Michael and me at your club!

 

I am here to ask you to help End Polio!

 

Rotarians like ourselves, are here because we care. We have common goals that we strive to reach personally as well with our club. Your goals may be similar to other clubs, may be vastly different but we work together to achieve better outcomes locally and further afield.

 

I was born in 1951 and I was brought into a world that had first world medicine and vaccines. My father as a 5 year old in the 1920s survived the Diphtheria epidemic in NYC because he had a hospital to go to with staff that could keep his airway open.

 

I remember some kids at school in callipers and I remember hearing those whispers of my mother and the other mums in the neighbourhood speaking about such and such a child in an ‘iron lung’, I remember so vividly! Also I have a cousin here in Australia who always walked with a limp because she contracted polio out in a regional area, not getting vaccinated in time; the vaccine was a relatively new medicine. I remember the taste of the sweet pink-stained sugar cube....yes I can say, like others, I do re-member polio. I am so thankful that it is for my children’s sake and my grandchildren’s sake, it’s just a memory.

 

In 1979 under the Rotary Foundation Health, Hunger and Humanity program, Rotary immunised more than 6,000,000 Pilipino children. The International President John Germ, (whose own dad contracted Polio and was unable to support his family) plans to finish the work that Rotary, the primary fundraiser, along with the WHO and UNICEF began in 1988. This was when Rotary Foundation made a commitment to the goal of eradicating Polio worldwide.

 

Rotary’s End Polio campaign is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation so we can get rid of this disease in the last remaining pockets in the world once and for all.

 

Some more current info on the infection in the world so far-

 

Four countries: Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and Nigeria up till just a few years ago all were infected and now:

India is now Polio free since 2014-No recorded cases

Nigeria had 6 cases in 2014 and now polio free since the start of 2016

Afghanistan went from 28 (2014) and now has only 5 recorded cases

Pakistan went from 306 (2014) to 11 this year

 

To date this year there have only been 16 recorded cases in the world.

 

A country or region is not declared polio free until 3 years have passed without any recorded cases. Once that occurs then vaccinations must continue for every new child born, as it is here in our own Australia until it is totally gone, much like the small pox vax that we had been given but now it is eradicated, no one has those little circular marks on  upper arm or thigh.

 

I am not here to tell you what to do with your hard earned money and where it should go, I am here to ask you to contribute to the success of the End Polio campaign. I am asking you to contribute $26.50, why this amount? Well it is the amount; (in US dollars) that was the first donation to the Rotary Foundation 100 years ago!

 

If you could all take a moment to think about what $26.50 can do for you...a lunch out, or a few groceries, for you blokes maybe a hair cut... what $26.50 can do for the End Polio is this....

 

Every $ that we donate, is matched by $2.00 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Your $26.50 donation with the Gates Foundation $53 will provide $79.50

 

We have estimated that one dose of the vaccine is about $2...then there are all the other supporting items- vests, carrier bags for vaccines, vaccines and the purple markers to mark each child’s finger to show that they have been vaccinated.

 

So now I put to your club: if you can donate $2,650 which is 26.50 x 100 years of Foundation, just think how much that could do with the matching $2 for every $ from the Gates Foundation

 

Thank you for considering putting an end to this preventable disease.... and making it just a memory for all.