Ken Logan, End Polio Now District Officer, In updating the Club on the success of this campaign also reflected on what had been achieved since its launch in 1985. The facts he said, speak for themselves.
In 1985 at the time of the launch there were 350,000 reported POLIO cases globally, whilst today we had 42 cases being tackled in Afghanistan and Pakistan .
During the peak immunisation period some 190,000 vaccine specialists had immunised 116 million children in 13 countries in 3 DAYS.
India has now been polio free for 5 years with 72 million children being vaccinated twice each year.
Rotary had donated $1.9 Billion to this programme over this period with the Bill & Malinda Gates foundation contributing 2:1 the Rotary commitment ie if we
contribute £1:00 B&M will contribute a further £2:00 therefore the
total is £3:00.
and local governments contributing $8 Billion.
The global target is to have a CONFIRMED elimination of Polio by 2035, and to achieve this all Rotarians and their Campaign partners must continue to donate to the campaign for this target to be achieved.