President King thanked our greeters.

He said Joyce Young, who was to be our speaker this day, could not make it. She is a polio survivor and today is celebrated as World Polio Day. 

Chuck read what Joyce intended to say:

"Today is World Polio Day. It's also the birthday of Jonas Salk, who developed the vaccine to end polio. A decade ago Rotary Foundation decided to commemorate the birthday of Jonas Salk by celebrating the millions of volunteers working to end polio with World Polio Day. Use of the Salk inactivated vaccine and Sabin's oral vaccine gave rise to the hope that we could rid the planet of this terrible devasting disease. It led to the establishment of the Global Polio Eradication initiative in 1988. Rotary International is a partner in this GPEI as is the World Health Organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, UNICER and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. You have all heard about the success of the GPEI and the Rotary International campaign, and the reduction of polio cases from 350,000 in  1985 to 33 world wide in 2018. 99.9 reduction!

Lots of success to report, year after year.

 Until this year.

Last year, the campaign poster featured a picture of a hand with the thumb and forefinger close together, with the caption, "we're this close to ending polio."

And the steady decline in the number of cases pointed to the inal eradication. So this year, 2019, the campaign carried on its momentum. Rotary committed $ 100 million to the campaign this year. $50 million will be matched 2 for 1 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

 But new cases, 42 of them, showed up in Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2019. A hotly contested election halted the success of the immunization program in Pakistan. Further, the immunization campaign divides families within countries just as it does in the US. Not everyone believes the end polio now campaign is necessary. The London Times reported that a Pakistani man divorced his wife when he came home to discover that his three children's fingers were marked by the indelible ink showing proof of vaccination.

 Some countries in Africa have outbreaks of vaccine derived polio, mutated strains of polio virus used in live vaccines. These have reverted back to lorms capable of causing paralysis. Also, in the Republic of Congo they have had several outbreaks.

 

Last month, the Emergency Committee under international Health Regulation convened to discuss the increase in the disease, both from the polio virus and the vaccine derived outbreaks in Africa, and China and the Philippines.

 

So as we celebrate today a campaign involving 20 million volunteers, 2.5 billion children vaccinated over 30 years in 200 countries, we can see that while we may be this close to ending polio, ending polio is going to take everythng it's possible to do. There's no end to the need for public education. And there's no end to the need for immunization.

In Pakistan, a child must be vaccinated at least three times to be considered immune. That means that a volunteer must find the child three times and go thru the procedure of notifying the family three times.

 

On the medical side, because of the outbreaks of mutated vaccine, there  is no end to the work necessary to integrate the live and inactive virus in a new vaccine. And on all fronts there is no end to the new efforts to end polio now.

 

Rotary is working on a new plan to eradicate polio, and I look forward to hearing about it soon. Because in today's global society, polio will not be eradicated until there are no more cases."

 

It was mentioned at the last meeting that we had $9,700 for Operation Warm, our project to provide new warm winter coats for those in need. Sofie Ameloot said we got $534 last week and now have $10,150 for Operation Warm.

 

Arnie Biondo said we have more than $18,000 in sponsorships for the Pancake Breakfast, a record thus far. Sofie said Arnie knocked one out of the park in gathering sponsorships.