Speaker: PDG Mukesh Malhotra - End Polio Now

The guest speaker on 7th December was our very good friend Mukesh Malhotra who came to tell us about The World's Greatest Meal To End Polio. 
The World’s Greatest Meal was the brainchild of two Rotarians from either side of the globe – one of them being Mukesh of the Rotary Club of Hounslow, the other being Susanne Rea of the Rotary Club of Cairns Sunrise in Australia. This all started when they met at a meeting of The Rotary Club of Richmond little more than 18 months ago and found that they both shared the same fundraising idea.
Mukesh said that it was an important time in the fight to eradicate polio, which would be only the second human disease to be eradicated, after smallpox. In September, the World Health Organization declared Africa’s last polio-endemic country, Nigeria, polio-free, leaving only two countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the disease is still to be beaten. In 1988, when Rotary and its partners committed to eradicating the disease, polio paralyzed more than 350,000 children per year in 125 countries - or, more than 1,000 per day. Since that time, the number of polio cases has been reduced by 99.9%, with less than 51 cases in two countries to date in 2015. 
It costs relatively little to immunise but there are tremendous physical barriers in the two remaining countries.
We sincerely hope we are now in the final stages but the effort must be kept up to ensure the polio virus never again gets a hold which it could do if left untreated