Polio
As of 28 February 2010, Rotarians have raised about $114.5 million for Rotary's US$200 Million Challenge. These contributions will help Rotary raise $200 million to match $355 million in challenge grants received from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The resulting $555 million will directly support immunization campaigns in developing countries, where polio continues to infect and paralyze children, robbing them of their futures and compounding the hardships faced by their families.
As long as polio threatens even one child anywhere in the world, children everywhere remain at risk. The stakes are that high.
The US$555 million funding agreement between Rotary and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where all Rotary contributions are matched $ for $ by Bill Gates, marks another milestone in Rotary's 20-year legacy of polio eradication work.
Rotary made a commitment to immunize the world's children against polio in 1985 and became a spearheading partner in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative three years later. The other partners are the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and UNICEF.
Rotary's primary responsibilities include fundraising, advocacy, and volunteer recruitment. To date, Rotary has already contributed more than $800 million to the polio eradication effort.
With nearly 33,000 clubs in over 200 countries and geographical areas, Rotary reaches out to national governments worldwide to generate crucial financial and technical support for polio eradication. Since 1995, the advocacy efforts of Rotary and its partners have helped raise more than $3 billion in vital funding from donor governments.
Rotary clubs also provide "sweat equity" on the ground in polio-affected communities, which helps ensure that leaders at all levels remain focused on the eradication goal. Over the years, Rotary club members have volunteered their time and personal resources to reach more than two billion children in 122 countries with the oral polio vaccine.
Thanks to Rotary and its partners, the number of polio cases has been slashed by more than 99 percent, preventing five million instances of childhood paralysis and 250,000 deaths. When Rotary began its eradication work, polio infected more than 350,000 children annually. In 2008, fewer than 2,000 cases were reported worldwide.
But the polio cases represented by that final 1 percent will be the most difficult and expensive to prevent for a variety of reasons, including geographical isolation, worker fatigue, armed conflict, and cultural barriers. It is interesting to note though that Rotary International managed to stop fighting in Afghanistan long enough to immunise all the children and effectively kill the disease in that country.
That's why it's so important to generate the funding needed to finish the job. To ease up now would be to invite a polio resurgence that would condemn millions of children to lifelong paralysis in the years ahead.
http://www.rotary.org/en/EndPolio/Pages/learn.aspx
