Our annual World Polio Day event, co-hosted with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, brought together more than 100,000 viewers around the world. More than 3,000 events took place this World Polio Day to recognize the progress we've made in the fight to end polio. Find out how you can take part in World Polio Day, and watch our livestream program featuring global health experts and celebrities sharing our progress on the road to polio eradication.
Rotary, the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in 1988. In 2007, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation joined Rotary in its commitment to ending polio.
Since 2013, the Gates Foundation has matched every $1 Rotary commits to polio eradication 2-to-1, up to $35 million per year. Rotary, with matching funds from the Gates Foundation, has contributed more than $1.6 billion to end polio.
Since we started the fight against polio, we’ve reduced the number of polio cases by 99.9 percent and reached more than 2.5 billion children with the vaccine. There are fewer polio cases today than ever before, but we will not stop until we reach zero. If polio is not eradicated, hundreds of thousands of children could be paralyzed. Global health care costs would rise dramatically, and many children’s quality of life would be drastically diminished.
Join us in the fight to end polio and help us save lives and give a child a chance at a prosperous future
For more information click this link https://www.endpolio.or
The facts
1 Polio manily affects children under 5
2 There is no cure, but polio is preventyable with a vaccine.
3 Only three countries remain endemic
4 We've reduced cases by 99.9% since 1988
5 Until we end polio forever, every child is at risk.