In August PDG John Adams and I attended a polio seminar in Evanston, IL. In
attendance were 50 Rotarians from 13 different countries, including Rotary
International President Sakuji Tanaka and Internation President Elect Ron
Burton. The message of this meeting was that polio remains Rotary's top
priority and there is work to be done. A main concern was that Rotarians may
think, because of the decrease in numbers of new cases, that our work is about
finished. That is not the case, remember, after eradication comes certification
and for a country to be declared polio free it takes three years without any new
cases. It is imperative that Rotarians and partners continue their efforts to
eradicate and certfy the end of polio. Please remember that our work is not
finished. We must continue to raise funds and be a voice for the children of
the world. Rotarians have worked tirelessly for over 30 years to accomplish the
goal of a polio free world. WE CANNOT AND MUST NOT AND WILL NOT FAIL
NOW!!!!
Thanks for allowing me to share this message with you. Attached,
to this message, is an article that appeared in the Chicago Tribune on September
5, 2012 about the polio seminar in Evanston.
END POLIO NOW
John
Salyers
Polio Chair D6740
.......
By
Susan Berger, Special to the Tribune
September
5, 2012
Mary Stitt is
an 87-year-old retired elementary school principal, mother of five, grandmother
of 11 and great-grandmother of six.
The Arlington
Heights resident also is part of a worldwide effort by Rotary International to
eradicate polio. Stitt has traveled to India, Niger and Nigeria a total of
six times since 2004 to inoculate children with polio vaccine. When she walks
down the streets of Nigeria, she says, she is easily recognizable because there
are not too many elderly white women.
"They
call me Grandma Mary," said Stitt, a Rotarian for 20 years who has stayed
active following cardiac stent surgery in 2009. "The last time I was in
Nigeria in the fall of 2010, we were out in the neighborhoods, and a woman said
to me, 'I know you.'"
Stitt is one of more than a million Rotarians who have
donated their time and money to a program called PolioPlus, which started in
1988 with the goal of eradicating polio, a highly infectious and crippling disease.
To date, Rotary has raised more $1.2 billion for an effort that has reached
more that 2 billion children in 122 countries.
The results of the efforts by Rotary and other organizations
battling polio are staggering. In 1988, 125 countries were polio-endemic and
more than 350,000 children paralyzed each year. In 2011, there were 650 cases
globally in 16 countries, according to the World Health Organization. This
year, as of last week, there have been 128 cases in four countries.
Three
of those countries, Pakistan, Nigeria and Afghanistan, have never been
polio-free. They have accounted for 123 of this year's cases (the others have
been in Chad). The disease continues to present a significant challenge, not
only to the health of people living there but also to those from other
countries who come in contract through travel. Officials battling polio fear
that a rebound in overall cases could harm eradication efforts.
In August, 50 Rotary leaders from the U.S. and nine other nations
met at the organization's headquarters in Evanston to strategize for a United
Nations General Assembly meeting Sept. 27 at which U.N. Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon is expected to issue a strong call to action in support of polio
eradication.
The polio virus primarily strikes children under 5, according to
the World Health Organization. It causes paralysis by invading the nervous
system, sometimes just hours after being contracted. One in 200 who get the
virus will be paralyzed, and among those, 5 to 10 percent will die when
their breathing muscles become immobilized. The United States, once gripped in
fear of the disease for decades, is one of many parts of the world considered
polio-free, but children here still are inoculated.
Aziz Memon, the national chairman of PolioPlus in Pakistan,
who gave a presentation at the Evanston meeting, said terrorism, corruption,
floods, inaccessibility, religious misconception and a drop in routine
immunizations have been barriers toward worldwide eradication after years of
tremendous progress.
"This
is the time, this is the best time," Memon said, explaining that the
world is at a tipping point in eradication. Holding up his thumb and index
finger, he said, "We are this close."
But accessibility to politically charged areas is difficult, preventing
youths who need inoculations from receiving them.
"The issue is in the north FATA region (the Federally
Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan near Afghanistan), where the war is going
on and drone attacks are going on, and we are not allowed there," Memon
said.
Memon explained
that following the death of Osama bin Laden, local officials will not allow
vaccinators into the area. Shakil Afridi, a local doctor recruited by the
CIA to obtain DNA from members of bin Laden's family, entered bin Laden's home
on the pretense of vaccinating for meningitis. Since that time, efforts to
vaccinate children for polio in the FATA region have been thwarted.
"They don't allow us to enter there," Memon said.
"When the people (from that region) are displaced, they move all over
Pakistan and can transmit polio."
Organizers take comfort in the success they have had in
eradicating polio from India. According to The World Health Organization, that
country had 75,000 new cases in 1988. That was reduced to 741 in 2009,
42 in 2010 and 1 in 2011.
In Pakistan, Memon said, notable personalities have joined
the efforts to immunize. Cricket star Shahid Afridi has produced TV
commercials in which he says, "Do you choose a cricket bat or
crutches?"
Assefa Bhutto
Zardari, the 19-year-old daughter of slain Pakistan President Benazir Bhutto
and the first child in that country to be vaccinated against polio, has also
made public service commercials.
And Americans like Stitt, who hopes to make another trip abroad
this winter, are doing their part. In 2008, Stitt met a 7-year-old girl in
Jos, Nigeria. She was sitting on the ground, her limbs shriveled by polio, and
she couldn't move. Stitt paid $150 to get her a bicycle-propelled
wheelchair. When she returned to the states, Stitt organized the Arlington
Heights Rotary to raise $2,500 for wheelchairs for children in Jos
crippled by polio.
The goal, however, is to prevent children from contracting the
disease.
Richard Rivkin, 64 of Deerfield and a member and past president of
Northbrook Rotary, led a team of 20 to India in February. While polio has been
virtually eradicated in India, children still need to be vaccinated because it
borders Pakistan, where the disease is still endemic, he said. He participated
in a three-day national immunization during which 197 million children were
immunized.
Rivkin said he and his team arrived in Moradabad, and in
addition to working at booths and stands and going house to house, they also went
to train stations. Each child would receive two drops of vaccine and then their
little finger would be marked with a semipermanent marker.
"It is an amazing experience to watch a parent's eyes and
face as we are putting life-saving medicine in the mouths of their
children," Rivkin said. "We will never know if any of the
children that our team gave vaccine to will grow up to be a teacher, a
scientist, a government official or a business leader. We don't know. But we
did our part."
Rivkin said the Indian government is committed to sharing
their expertise and techniques and technology with neighboring countries
Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"Ten years ago India was thought to be the biggest challenge,
just because of the sheer numbers of the population," he said. "The
sheer numbers are staggering. India has four times the population of the U.S.
compressed into one-third of the land mass of the continental U.S.
"With the government and support of the world community,
Rotary, UNICEF, the World Health Organization and the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation, we put this together and were able to achieve this
milestone," Rivkin said. "With the continuing support of the
international community, (the worldwide eradication of polio) can happen."
Carol Pandak,
the manager of PolioPlus in Evanston, warns that while the numbers of
polio cases are low, the funding required to interrupt the transmission of the
virus is significant,
"Through 2013 the funding gap is right now $945
million," Pandak
said.
Rotary International estimates a $40 billion to $50 billion
savings from polio eradication, funds that could be use to address other health
issues. The savings in human suffering, they say, are immeasurable.
