Senator Presents Grantee of Merit Award to Rotary International

By Arnold Grahl

U.S. Senator Ted Stevens, of Alaska, USA, on 20 May, awarded the 2008 Open World National Grantee of Merit to Rotary International for its ongoing commitment to sharing U.S. political and civic life with future Russian leaders.

The senator presented the award to Rotary Foundation Trustee Carolyn Jones of Anchorage, Alaska, USA, and Past RI Director Grant Wilkins of Denver, Colorado, USA. Both have played a role in the success of the Open World program.

"I am excited to see the evolution of the Open World program over these nine years and the continued partnership between Rotary International," said Jones, in a release. "Rotary's mission is to promote peace and world understanding, whereas Open World's goal is to increase U.S.-Eurasian understanding and partnership.  We were a natural fit.” 

Established by the U.S. Congress in 1999, the Open World Leadership Center at the Library of Congress is intended to enhance cooperation between United States and the countries of Eurasia and the Baltic States. To achieve this, Open World develops a network of leaders who travel to the U.S. to experience and learn about democracy, accountable government, and a free-market system.

Stevens, an honorary member of the Rotary Club of Girdwood, Alaska, praised Jones' for her role in the program. "I am particularly appreciative of the work she has done to make the Open World program successful," said Stevens. "She has demonstrated a great commitment to service throughout her career, and her efforts have been recognized both in the United States and in Russia."

Wilkins, who was also on hand to accept the award on behalf of RI, helped organize the latest Open World initiative in Denver. Thirty Russian health care professionals spent a week in April examining health fairs with the expectation of implementing the same type of exhibitions back home.

"It's really a win, win, win," said Wilkins. "The government pays. We host the visiting Russians. And they go back and say `Go Rotary.'”

Note: The Greenville Rotary Club participated in this program last year.  For more information contact Greenville Club President Bill Kirker at wkirker@stpaulhomes.org .

Posted 6/27/08
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Former Scholar Keeps Vaccine Pipeline Running in Pakistan and Afghanistan

By Dan Nixon

Once an Ambassadorial Scholar, Farrukh Jamal Syed today plays a key role in the battle to end polio. His Pakistan-based company manufactures vitally needed vaccine carriers that are being provided through a PolioPlus Partners grant.

Substantial funding for the grant came from Dan Holzapfel, of the Rotary Club of Cleveland, Queenland, Australia.

The Pakistan PolioPlus Committee saved around US$40,000, thanks to the involvement of this former Rotary Foundation Scholar, says committee chair Abdul Haiy Khan of Syed's contribution to the polio eradication effort. Khan adds that other carriers cost at least three times more than the ones produced by Simcon.

Khan had approached Syed with the committee's need for an easily  transportable carrier that would keep vaccines safe in temperatures as high as 115 degrees Farenheit (46 degrees centigrade). Syed was up to the task: His firm, Simcon International, specializes in industrial product design, development, and manufacturing.

Since 2006, Simcon has produced approximately 100,000 carriers. "It is a nice feeling of satisfaction and great achievement [to work] for humanity and The Rotary Foundation," Syed says. "Work for the Rotary name has great importance in my life

Syed has maintained ties with Rotary ever since he studied computer-assisted design and manufacturing as a 1989-90 Ambassadorial Scholar in England. He later joined his sponsor Rotary Club of Islamabad (Metropolitan), but was unable to maintain membership in Rotary after moving his company to a remote area. He has since relocated his business to downtown Karachi and says he would like to rejoin the organization that helped launch his career.

"The experience I gained from the scholarship directly helped me in building the concept for Simcon," he says, adding that it also helped shape his worldview. "Generally, people from any part of the world have the same feelings and the same needs. What matters is how quickly we can understand each other by establishing good communication and giving respect."

Posted 6/10/08
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Somalia Scores `Historic' Polio-Free Achievement
By Dan Nixon and Vivian Fiore

In a triumph over violence, poverty, and poor infrastructure, Somalia has once again become polio-free. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) announced on 25 March that the West African nation hasn't reported a case of polio since a year ago. Although it eradicated the disease in 2002, Somalia became reinfected in 2005 by poliovirus originating in Nigeria, resulting in an outbreak of 228 cases.

Innovative approaches tailored to conflict areas were pivotal in conquering polio in Somalia. More than 10,000 volunteers and health workers used several doses of monovalent vaccines to immunize children in insecure areas in a short period. With strong community support, the effort succeeded in reaching more than 1.8 million children under age five across one of the most dangerous countries on earth.

"This truly historic achievement shows that polio can be eradicated everywhere, even in the most challenging and difficult settings," says Dr. Hussein A. Gezairy, director of the World Health Organization's Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office.

One of Somalia's volunteers and health workers is Ali Mao Moallim, the last person on earth to contract smallpox — the first disease eradicated worldwide — in 1977. Working with the World Health Organization, he has traveled extensively in his country to immunize children against polio and promote community support for immunization campaigns. "Somalia was the last country with smallpox," he says. "I wanted to help ensure that we would not be the last place with polio too."

"Somalia beat polio in the midst of more widespread conflict and poverty than that affecting Afghanistan and Pakistan," says Dr. Maritel Costales, a UNICEF senior health adviser in New York, who cited the challenges of overcoming widespread insecurity and large population movements in a country with no central government. "But Somalia shows that when communities are engaged, children everywhere can be reached.”

Afghanistan and Pakistan, which together accounted for 5 percent of all polio cases in 2007, could be the first of the four remaining endemic countries — the other two are India and Nigeria – to end polio.

"Somalia clearly shows that the tailored tools and tactics of the intensified eradication effort are working," says Mohamed Benmejdoub, chair of Rotary's Eastern Mediterranean PolioPlus Committee. "A polio-free world is a feasible public health goal and a global public good. I urge governments across the world — and in particular the G-8 countries — to rapidly make available the necessary resources.  Together, we can ensure that no child need ever again suffer the terrible pain of lifelong polio paralysis."

Posted 4/2/08
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Google Gives Rotary US$3.5 Million to Help End Polio
by Dan Nixon and Vivian Fiore, Rotary International News

Rotary International has received a US$3.5 million challenge grant from the Google Foundation, a nonprofit managed by Google.org, in support of Rotary's top goal to eradicate polio worldwide. Rotary will raise funds to match the Google Foundation grant dollar-for-dollar over one year.

The grant and matching funds will directly support polio immunization activities carried out by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), a partnership spearheaded by the World Health Organization, Rotary International, UNICEF, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

 "Following the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's $100 million grant to Rotary in November, Google.org represents another response to the call for support by Rotary and its partners to finish polio," says Dr. Robert S. Scott, trustee chair of The Rotary Foundation. "Both challenge grants reflect strong confidence in Rotary's leadership role in working relentlessly to help achieve this vital public heath goal for the world’s children.”

Eradicating polio has been Rotary's number-one priority since 1985. To date, Rotary has helped immunize nearly two billion children and contributed $650 million to the GPEI, a figure that will rise to more than $850 million by the time the world is certified polio-free. 

Globally, the number of polio cases has fallen from 350,000 annually in the mid-1980s to approximately 2,000 cases in 2006. The GPEI has succeeded in lashing the number of cases by 99 percent and decreased the number of polio-endemic countries from 125 to just 4: Afghanistan, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan.

Posted 2/20/08
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UN Secretary-General Meets with Rotary Leaders
by Susie Ma, Rotary International News

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met with Rotary leaders and praised Rotarians for their commitment to polio eradication during a recent visit to Chicago.

"Rotary International has led a worldwide campaign to wipe out polio. Sometime soon, their work will be done. Polio will be history, like smallpox," Ban said in an address to the Economic Club of Chicago on 7 February 2008.

At a private ceremony earlier in the day, Rotary International President Wilfrid J. Wilkinson presented Ban with the Rotary International Award of Honor in recognition of his support for polio eradication and his dedication to furthering peace and cross-cultural understanding. Past recipients of this high Rotary honor include Kofi Annan, Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Nelson Mandela.

The secretary-general also met with Foundation Trustee Chair Robert S. Scott, RI General Secretary Edwin H. Futa, and RI President-elect Dong Kurn Lee. Ban and Lee, both South Koreans are friends.

Rotary's close ties with the UN date back to 1945 when 49 Rotarians helped draft the UN charter. Rotary continues to collaborate with the UN through the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, a partnership with the United Nation's Children's Fund, the World Health Organization, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Posted 2/12/08
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Gates Foundation, Rotary Pledge $200 Million to Fight Polio

By Deborah L. Shelton | Chicago Tribune staff reporter 

Aiming to inject $200 million into the global campaign to eradicate polio, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced today that it is awarding a $100 million challenge grant to the Evanston-based Rotary Foundation.

The Rotary Foundation said it plans to match the Gates grant dollar-for-dollar through fundraising over the next three years. In the first year alone, Rotary expects to spend $100 million on immunization projects in the four remaining countries where polio is still endemic.

The grant is one of the largest challenge grants ever awarded by the Gates Foundation and is the largest given by any organization to Rotary. The foundation is the nonprofit charitable arm of Rotary International, which has contributed $633 million to efforts to stamp out polio.

Eradicating the crippling and potentially fatal disease would represent a landmark public health achievement, and some global health experts believe the world stands at the brink of seeing that goal realized. Other experts are not so sure.

Scientists and public health professionals have been debating whether eradication is possible. Some have argued that resources should be directed at trying to contain the disease, which would be far less costly than trying to eliminate it entirely.

That idea was dismissed at today's announcement.

"Eradicating polio is an achievable goal," said William Gates Sr., co-chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Dr. Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization, said: "We have very few opportunities to improve the world in a permanent way. And this is one."

Polio has stricken untold millions around the world. In 1952, its peak year in the U.S., it paralyzed more than 20,000 Americans. But it became a disease of the past in this country after the discovery of a preventive vaccine in the 1950s and universal immunization. Gone were widespread fears about sudden, debilitating paralysis and the use of massive iron lungs to keep people alive. No cases of infection from "wild virus" -- transmitted from person to person -- have been reported in this country since 1979.

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative was launched in 1988, led by the World Health Organization, Rotary International, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and UNICEF. At that time, more than 125 countries reported polio cases. Since then, the incidence of polio has been cut by more than 99 percent, and endemic wild polio virus has been eliminated in every country except Nigeria, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Last year, fewer than 2,000 cases were reported worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Poliomyelitis mainly affects children under age 5. The virus enters the body through the mouth, multiplies in the intestine and invades the nervous system. One in 200 polio infections leads to irreversible paralysis, usually in the legs. Among those paralyzed, 5 to 10 percent die when muscles in their chest become immobilized and they are unable to breathe.

"Since the virus moves from child to child, it is capable of re-emerging anywhere in the world if we let down our guard and don't eradicate it," said Dr. Robert Scott, who leads Rotary's polio-eradication effort and is chairman of The Rotary Foundation.

The Gates grant comes at a critical time for the global initiative, which faces a funding shortfall of $650 million, officials said. Most of the initial $100 million will be spent on mass immunization campaigns, poliovirus surveillance activities, and community education and outreach in polio-affected countries.

In recent years, importation of the disease from affected areas into countries where the disease had been eliminated has set back eradication efforts. But last month the World Health Organization released data indicating that the last four polio-endemic countries were within reach of wiping out the disease. The health authority said significant progress had been made in India and Nigeria, which together account for 85 percent of the world’s polio cases.

"We hope that this shared commitment of Rotary and the Gates Foundation will challenge other donors--including foundations, governments and non-governmental organizations--to step up and make sure we have the resources needed to rid the world of polio once and for all,” Scott said.

Chan said the grant "is precisely the catalyst we need as we intensify the push to finish polio. We have the technical tools to do it, and we can achieve a polio-free world."

Posted 10/20/07
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Polio Just a 'Plane Ride Away'

By Vanessa N. Glavinskas
Rotary International News

A 22-year-old Pakistani student was released from an Australian hospital today, after recovering from the polio virus. A national health alert was issued in Australia on 13 July after the student was diagnosed with polio, the first case of the virus in the country in 21 years.

Another case of polio was also detected in Chad last month. Rotary's PolioPlus Partners program quickly released US$241,000 to support urgent preventive immunization activities in neighboring Sudan, amid continued political unrest in the country.

Rotary Foundation Trustee Chair Bob Scott calls the outbreaks a "wake-up call.”

"It proves beyond a doubt that polio in your polio-free country is just a plane ride away.”  Scott says.  “It’s essential to continue the PolioPlus program.”

The student contracted the disease while visiting his native Pakistan, one of the four remaining polio-endemic countries. He experienced symptoms, including initial paralysis, and recovered at Melbourne's Box Hill Hospital. He was isolated from the community until he tested negative for the virus.

After learning about the case from Jenny Horton, a Rotary club member who consults for the World Health Organization on the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in Pakistan, Melbourne-area Rotarians reacted quickly to support the student’s recovery.

Arrangements were made to provide the student with new clothes, since his clothing had been confiscated in case it carried the virus. Jennifer Coburn, of the Rotary Club of Mont Albert & Surrey Hills, Victoria, went to visit the patient in isolation, lifting his spirits by bringing him books, puzzles, and the daily newspaper.

"This is a definite and very easy way to assist a person in need of support," says Coburn, noting how far the student is from his family, and the intense media scrutiny he had been under after the alert was issued. "He is really delighted that he is receiving support from Rotary. The need for human interaction is so important."

Posted 8/10/07
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Eradicate Polio Rather Than Control It, Harvard Researchers Say

By Joseph Derr
Rotary International News

The battle to eradicate polio has been expensive and difficult. But ditching the current eradication plan in favor of a policy that aims to control spread of the disease would be far more costly, a new report says.

A recent study by the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), which was published in the 21 April issue of the leading medical journal The Lancet, found that despite the relatively high short-term costs, global polio eradication is a better option than trying to control the disease to a certain number of cases per year.

"Eradication offers both lower cumulative costs and cases than control in the long-term, even with the costs of achieving eradication exceeding several billion dollars more," said Kimberly Thompson, associated professor of Risk Analysis and Decision Science at HSPH.

Researchers used a mathematical model to weigh financial and human costs and health outcomes of control and eradication options. Researchers factored in the number of expected polio cases for the next 20 years and a range of controlling options to come to their conclusions.

Through its PolioPlus program, Rotary and its global partners have been working toward polio eradication for more than 20 years, contributing to a 99 percent drop in the number of cases since 1988. The global effort has invested some $5.3 billion in the cause so far, of which about $650 million will have come from Rotary by the time the world is certified polio-free.

Concerns of the high perceived costs of eradicating polio surfaced last year in scientific journals, when skeptical experts proposed that the focus shift from eradication to effectively controlling the disease’s spread, pointing to several challenges that stand in the way of reaching the last one percent of cases of polio in four countries.

Yet accepting a certain number of cases per year in favor of perceived lower costs also poses difficult ethical questions, says Robert Scott, chair of the International PolioPlus Committee.

"What’s the acceptable [level of] control? There are the human suffering costs, too," Scott says. "How do you put a dollar amount on pain and the suffering of lifelong paralyzed limbs?"

Posted 5/24/07
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Rotary Graphics have been supplied compliments of Tord Elfwendahl. The Rotary Club of Stockholm Strand, RI District 2360 Creator and Curator of a very extensive Library of Rotary Graphics.