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Polio and Rotary - Wall Street Journal 12 April 2005
Today marks the 50th
anniversary of the Salk polio vaccine. Poliomyelitis, also know
as infantile paralysis, used to be one of childhood's most feared
diseases. A few years after Dr. Jonas Salk announced his vaccine
on April 12, 1955, nearly every child in the U.S. was protected.
Today polio has disappeared from the Americas, Europe and the Western
Pacific and is nearly gone from the rest of the world.
A too-little known part
of this feat is the role played by Rotary, the international business-
man's club, which 20 years ago adopted the goal of wiping out the
disease. Rotary understood that medical breakthroughs are worth-
less unless people aren't afraid to immunize their children and
efficient delivery systems exist to get the vaccine to them. And
so it mobilized its members in 30,100 clubs in 166 countries to
make it happen.
In 1985, when Rotary
launched its eradication program, there were an estimated 350,000
new cases of polio in 125 countries. Last year, 1,263 cases were
reported. More than one million Rotary members have volunteered
their time or donated money to immunize two billion children in
122 countries. In 1988, Rotary money and its example were the catalyst
for a global eradication drive joined by the World Health Organization,
Unicef and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. In 2000 Rotary
teamed up with the United Nations Foundation to raise $100 million
in private money for the program. By the time the world is certified
as polio-free- probably in 2008 - Rotary will have contributed $600
million to its eradication effort.
An
economist of our acquaintance calls Rotary's effort the most effective
private health-care initiative ever. A vaccine-company CEO recently
volunteered to us that the work of Rotary and the Gates Foundation,
both private groups, has been more effective than any government
in promoting vaccines to save lives. It's become fashionable in
some quarters to deride civic volunteerism, but Rotary's unsung
polio effort deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
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