End Polio Now

Since the latter half of the nineteenth century Polio has been maming and killing hundreds of thousands of people every year.

In 1905 Swedish Physician Ivar Wickman suggested that Polio was a contagious disease that can spread from person to person and also recognised the fact that polio could be present in people who show no symptoms

In 1908 in Vienna Karl Landsteiner and Erwin Popper discover that Polio is caused by a virus.

in 1916 a major polio outbreak in New York City kills more than 2,000 people. Across the United States polio takes the lives of about 6,000 people and paralyses thousands more.

The emphasis at that time was in treatment and in 1929 Philip Drinker and Harvard University's Louis Agassiz Shaw Jr. invent an artificial respirator for patients suffering from paralytic polio - The Iron Lung!

It wasn't until 1955 that a vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk is declared "safe and effective"

In 1960 The U.S.Government licenced the oral polio vaccine developed by Dr. Albert Sabin.

Rotary comes on the scene in 1979 to take on a project to deliver polio vaccine to more than 6 million children in the Philippines and in 1985 Rotary International launched "Polio Plus", the first and largest internationally co-ordinated private sector support of a public health initiative, with an initial fundraising target of $120 million.

It is not until 1988 that Rotary International and World Health Organisation launch the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. There were at that time an estimated 350,000 cases of polio in 120 countries.

In 1994 Polio was eliminated from the Americas and in 1995 health workers and volunteers immunise 165 million children in China and India in just one week.

The fight continues with only three countries remaining with endemic wild polio  virus cases in 2017, Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The end is in sight and it is envisaged that the world will be rid of polio forever by 2020. Click here to learn more about "End Polio Now"