I’d heard of Rotary prior to Brad’s involvement, but had erroneously associated the name with just a bunch of retired men who held social gatherings to accomplish nothing more than that. In fact, Rotary is a worldwide organization of business and professional leaders that provides humanitarian service and helps promote goodwill and peace throughout the globe. Its worldwide membership consists of 1.2 million men and women who belong to more than 32,000 Rotary clubs in more than 200 countries and geographical areas. I have indeed benefited from the education as to who they are and what they do.
Brad informed me that together with a commitment from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation of $100 million, Rotary International plans to raise a matching $100 million over three years to eradicate polio.
I took a moment after Brad’s announcement reawakened the notion that polio still lived to bring to mind the woman whose daughter had driven her into our driveway just over a year ago.
She had taken a long time to emerge from the passenger seat while I waited at the front door, assuming she was conversing with her young lady driver. When she finally did, it was with a metal brace on her right, stiffened leg and another on her arm that was attached to a cane. “Polio?” I had wondered in bafflement. How was that possible in someone my age?
Since then, I had buried the disease somewhere behind cancer, stroke and AIDS. We have so many uncured illnesses for which we campaign, so many newer, more “popular,” if you will, ones yet to cure.
Lest anyone feel as I first did and need further impetus to act, hear this: it only takes one random vacation or business trip between countries to spread the polio virus. Money donated will support research on ways to expedite the interruption of such transmission. Decades ago, polio outbreaks were a constant threat around the world, made historical by the Salk and Sabin vaccination n but do you realize, as Robert Scott, chairman of the Rotary Foundation of Rotary International warns, “because polio is a virus that moves from child to child, it is capable of re-emerging anywhere in the world if we let down our guard”?
Children and adults who haven’t been vaccinated could contract polio if they travel to a country where it still exists or where outbreaks have recently occurred, or if they come into contact with infected travelers from such countries. Translation n anyone who has not been vaccinated can bring it back, and a single infection brought into the U.S. could possibly lead to polio epidemics again if we don’t continue to immunize here as well.
The war against polio is an old one, but ongoing. And we are ever so close to erasing it.
“We have the technical tools to do it, and we can achieve a polio-free world if the rest of our financial partners step up to meet the challenge,” urges World Health Organization Director General Margaret Chan.
Rotary has been fighting polio since 1985 and has spent
$700 million in the battle. Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, calls the Rotary member dedication “extraordinary”: “(Their dedication) has played a critical role in bringing polio to the brink of eradication.”
The disease remains epidemic in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and India. All that is necessary is to immunize the children in these locations. But to do so, Rotary and the Gates Foundation need our help.
Rotary calls the drive to end polio “The $100 Million Challenge.” I suggest “The Coffee Break.” I personally challenge every citizen who reads this to take the money, just for the month of December, that you would otherwise hand over the counter for a morning latte and, just for one month, mimic the beverage in your own kitchen. Give the dollars you’ve saved as your Christmas offering to Rotary so that you can be one among us who puts an end, once and for all, to polio. I will do it for the woman in my driveway who never had a chance. “What Child Is This” who might have otherwise been crippled for life but instead, you saved?
For those interested in helping Rotary eradicate polio, please mail your tax deductible check, payable to Rotary District 5390 Foundation, to Missoula Sunrise Rotary, P.O. Box 5755, Missoula, MT 59806.
Kathleen Clary Miller is a writer who lives in Huson. Her column appears every other Friday on the Missoulian’s Opinion page.
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