Business meeting & District Governor visit.

This year’s District Governor is Chris Williams from Fishguard.  He spoke to the club about the world meeting of his fellow governors in the USA and of the aims of the organisation for the current year.  He reminded members that thirty years ago Rotary was the first organisation in the world to launch the Polio Plus initiative with the aim of ridding the world of the curse of polio.  It attracted a huge matching grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and later gained the full support of the United Nations.  When it started in 1985 there were 1000 new cases a day of polio and was endemic in many countries around the world.  By arranging for medical teams to travel the world tracking down outbreaks of the disease and vaccinating potential sufferers a dramatic reduction in polio cases has been achieved.

By 2014 the number of countries that still had polio victims had fallen from fifty to three.  This year Nigeria was declared free of polio leaving only two countries now with the disease, Afghanistan and Pakistan.  The number of daily cases had fallen last year to one a day with a further fall this year to one a week.  Chris Williams said that there is now every chance that in the next few years these last two countries will also be declared polio free and that then, like smallpox, it will be gone for ever.  Rotary member Dr Bob Bevington commented that because polio had been retreating for so many years it is now only older people who can remember the fear that outbreaks of the disease once brought to every country including our own.  People who survived an attack were often crippled for life.  Rotary President David Rogers thanked DG Chris Williams for reminding members of the extraordinary achievement of Polio Plus and what can be done collaboratively to make a difference to the quality of life for many.