The 5th annual Rotary World Polio Day event will be co-hosted with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on October 24. It will be streamed live from the Gates Foundation headquarters in Seattle, Washington to bring together more than 50,000 viewers around the world. Global health experts and celebrities will share the progress being made on the road to polio eradication.
A Polio Update: There have only been 10 new cases reported this year of the Wild Polio Virus. The last case was reported in late August in Pakistan. However, there have been 47 cases reported of the CVDPV, a form of polio which is caused from a circulating virus, which is common in places where regular Polio immunizations have not been completed regularly. Therefore children get symptoms from the vaccination itself. These cases would be far less if places like the Congo and Syria, where both countries are in internal war and conflict, had completed regular immunizations. The polio eradication effort, however, to eradicate the disease with in the next three years is still on target!
Further good news: The US Senate has recommended to approve $59 million towards Polio eradication, and Rotary has committed to raising $50 million a year for the next three years which will generously be matched 2-1 by the Gates Foundation. Let's all make a difference and help End Polio Now!! We are almost there!!
