Polio
Action: 25. Time: 15 minutes. Level of difficulty: Easy. For the results of last week’s action, click here.
By now, I’m sure you’ve heard that India just went through an entire year without any new cases of polio, a crippling disease that still haunts the developing world.
To celebrate, we’re asking our ONE members to join us in making some noise for this tremendous achievement. Positive news like this is rare in the world of global health, and we’re not going to let this one slip by.
Please write a message of congratulations to the millions of people — health workers, vaccinators, community and religious leaders, pediatricians and Rotarians — who worked to make India polio-free on End of Polio’s website. Encourage them to keep up the fight and show your support.
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Ramesh Ferris, a polio survivor and member of the Rotary Club, reflects on India’s achievement of going one year without polio.
Ramesh with a polio survivor in Afghanistan. While Ramesh was able to receive treatment, not all polio survivors have access to this type of care.
Today, the world marks a milestone in the fight to end polio. India, the place where I was born and contracted the crippling disease as a baby, has gone exactly 12 months without a reported case of polio.
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Friday the 13th is a day known for superstition, fear, and bad luck. But today, the global health community in India attained a milestone that will ensure that we remember this Friday the 13th as a day of progress and hope. As of today, India has gone an entire year without a case of polio. In technical-speak, this means that India has officially interrupted transmission of the virus and is no longer considered an endemic country, leaving only three countries (Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria) remaining in the world with endemic status.
Experts have long considered India to be one of the toughest places in the world to fight and eradicate polio. After all, India is neither a small nor homogenous place, and just two years ago, India had 741 cases of polio—the most in the world. How did they achieve this milestone?
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Oct 25th, 2011 10:35 AM UTC
By Field
Governor John Lynch (D-N.H.) issues a proclamation recognizing World Polio Day in New Hampshire.
New Hampshire Rotary members with Governor Lynch as he signs World Polio Day Proclamation
Yesterday, Rotary club presidents and ONE members from around the New Hampshire visited with Governor John Lynch as he signed a proclamation to recognize the day as World Polio Day and those who have worked so hard to eradicate the disease.
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Golf legend, polio survivor and Rotary supporter Jack Nicklaus salutes those who have worked to free the world from polio and urges them to “finish the job.”
Today, countries around the world observe World Polio Day. For the majority of people, including those in the United States, this might raise an eyebrow and a question of, “Polio? Isn’t that disease long gone?”
As a fortunate survivor of polio when I was a teenager, who — decades later — has had to deal with possible physical repercussions that could be related to post polio syndrome, the fact that parents and children don’t live in fear of contracting polio the way they did in my youth is worthy of celebration. It shows just how far we have come in conquering this dreaded disease.
Unfortunately, I also know that polio still strikes children in a few pockets around the world. And, like a wildfire that casts sparks which can ignite new fires, an outbreak of polio could be as close as a plane ride away.
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World Polio Day is simultaneously a celebration and a call to action.
It’s a celebration because in the past 20 years, polio cases are down 99 percent, thanks to one of the most ambitious global health campaigns in history. Through a vast partnership, we’ve delivered polio drops to children in impossible circumstances—in active war zones, in remote mountainous regions that are unreachable for months at a time. It’s a great achievement.
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Ann Lee Hussey, Chris Geer and Leroy P. Crockett
I traveled to Maine last week to meet with an area Rotary International Club and speak about ONE. Earlier this year, ONE and Rotary joined together in a formal collaboration, finding common cause in issue-based education and advocacy. Through the years, Rotary has demonstrated a long commitment to the world’s poorest people and in particular has sought to bring about the eradication of polio in the developing world.
As a result of this collaboration, I joined Tom Leary, from ONE Vote in New Hampshire, to deliver a talk to a local Rotary Club in Scarborough, Maine, located just south of Portland. We were welcomed by club president Leroy P. Crockett as we introduced ONE and the basics of our work and answered many thoughtful questions from club members. Since we started this outreach and have been interacting with local clubs, the invitations to speak have poured in. In fact, Tom had given a similar talk earlier in the day to a Rotary club in Kittery, Maine.
At the meeting in Scarborough, we were also joined by Ann Lee Hussey, a former Rotary District Governor, based in South Berwick, Maine. Ann Lee has led 18 immunization campaigns to countries where polio still threatens children, such as India, Bangladesh, Mali, Niger and Nigeria and is a true champion for those that remain at risk from this disease around the world.
As our collaboration with Rotary becomes more realized, it is exciting to see Rotary’s record of service and a membership core so involved and eager to make a difference in the world. It was great to engage with Rotarians in Maine and I look forward to another opportunity soon.
