On Tuesday, November 17 at 5:30 p.m., the Rotary Club of Silver City will host a reception with snacks and refreshments at the First Church of Harmony (Arizona and 7th Streets) to raise awareness of and generate support for Rotary's ongoing fight to erase the remaining vestiges of polio around the world. The event is open to the public and attendees are urged to come in a spirit of generosity in order to contribute to this important cause. Call Peter Falley at 388-2004 for further information about the reception.
Tom Walker, the District Governor of Rotary District 5520 will be at the reception and will provide an update on the current state of the polio eradication campaign.
The Silver City Rotary club makes significant contributions to local non-profit organizations, but its members also provide support for the international charitable work of the Rotary Foundation. One component of that work is the Polio Plus polio eradication project.
Since Rotary International made the eradication of polio one of its top priorities in 1985, it has contributed $1.2 billion to this cause. Billions have also been contributed by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other organizations. As a result of these efforts, remarkable progress has been achieved in the fight against polio. Since 1988, the number of polio cases has been reduced from 350,000 a year to just a few hundred a year now. The Americas were declared free from polio in 1994, the Western Pacific region in 2000, Europe in 2002, and Africa has not seen any cases in more than a year.
However, a remaining funding gap means immunization campaigns are being cut in high-risk countries, leaving children more vulnerable to polio. If polio isn't stopped now, the disease could stage a comeback, affecting an estimated 200,000 children every year. In that event, even children in the U.S. would once again be at risk, since not all American children are routinely vaccinated.
A highly infectious disease, polio still strikes children mainly under the age of five in parts of South Asia. Polio can cause paralysis and sometimes death. There is no cure for polio, but for as little as 60 cents worth of oral vaccine, a child can be protected from the disease for life. We are now at a critical time in the fight to eradicate polio, which would be only the second human disease to be eradicated. Case numbers of the disease have never been lower, and only a very few countries have never stopped transmission of the wild poliovirus.
For further information, visit www.endpolionow.org.