Page 20 - rotary2018

POLIO from page 17

By the late 1970s there were no more new cases of
polio being reported in the US.
By 1980, the undeveloped areas of the world were the
only places where polio remained rampant, still killing
and disabling children for life.
In 1981 a Rotary project to vaccinate all the children in
the Philippines was mounted.
In 1986, that project sparked the vision of Rotarians all
over the world to commit to do what was thought to be
impossible: to lead the effort to eliminate Polio every-
where on the Earth within 20 years....by the year 2005.
That “impossible task” has taken over 30 years and
has cost more than $5 Billion dollars. However, the end
is in sight. Sam Kennedy and his
In the summer of 2017 in Atlanta, Georgia, Rotarians new friends in Niger...
volunteering with
from around the world gathered to hear a stunning Rotary so that no child
announcement: new Polio cases caused by the wild ever again loses the
poliovirus have decreased by over 99% since 1988. use of his or her
From 1988, the numbers have dropped from an estimat- limb(s) to polio.
ed 350,000 new cases annually -- nearly all of them
affecting children -- to only 22 reported new cases in
2017. It is estimated that, because of the global effort to
eradicate the disease, more than 16 million people have
been spared from death or paralysis by polio.
In 2018, Rotary announced its final push to eliminate
polio: “Drop to Zero.” it is estimated that it will take 3 to

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