The Port Alfred Lions Club supported Rotary when they hosted their Beach Mile to raise funds for polio eradication and awareness. Dogs on leads were welcomed and both pooches and their owners received medals and wrist bands after completing the 1.61km walk and donate to Rotary International’s End Polio campaign. The event took place at Beach on Sunday November 24.
Polio, or poliomyelitis, is a paralysing and potentially deadly infectious disease that most commonly affects children under the age of 5. The virus spreads from person to person, typically through contaminated water. It can then attack the nervous system.
Rotary has been working to eradicate polio for more than 35 years. Our goal of ridding the world of this disease is closer than ever.
As a founding partner of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, we’ve reduced polio cases by 99.9 percent since our first project to vaccinate children in the Philippines in 1979.
Rotary members have contributed more than $2.1 billion and countless volunteer hours to protect nearly 3 billion children in 122 countries from this paralyzing disease. Rotary’s advocacy efforts have played a role in decisions by governments to contribute more than $10 billion to the effort.
Today, polio remains endemic only in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But it’s crucial to continue working to keep other countries polio-free. If all eradication efforts stopped today, within 10 years, polio could paralyze as many as 200,000 children each year.
Source: https://www.rotary.org/en/our-causes/ending-polio
- This article was first published in Talk of the Town, November 28, 2024. The newspaper serving the communities of Ndlambe and the Sunshine Coast, with a weekly wrap of Makhanda news, is available at stores from early on Thursdays.
