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In 1985 Rotary International started a campaign to immunise the children of the world against polio. In 1988 the World Health Organization (WHO), Rotary International, UNICEF, and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) forged the Global Polio Eradication Initiative to eradicate polio as a global imperative. The goal was to remove it permanently so that surveillance, screening, and control measures, such as vaccines, would no longer be needed. Since then, the number of cases has dropped dramatically to just 1000 cases a year, but the disease still exists in four countries. Although worldwide efforts to distribute a vaccine reduced polio by 99 percent, young people are still being infected. Rotary is committed to the final eradication of this devasting disease. Rotary support is not limited to raising funds. Rotary members in non-endemic countries personally volunteer their time to support the immunisation programme in the endemic countries. They seek to ensure that the message gets to the people who are cut off from the mainstream by conflict, geography or poverty and that the children living in these communities are immunised.
Getting saucy for polio!
In 2011/12, the Rotary Tomato Sauce (End Polio Now) initiative was conceived as a way for Rotarians and clubs to raise funds to help meet the challenge. Bristol Sundown will helping to raise over £300, 000 which wil buy 1 million doses of polio vaccine which will help save children in the four remaining endemic countries from this crippling and painful disease.
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