To prepare for its celebration of World Polio Day, the Antioch Rotary Club has been raising funds for its share of the fight. The Club set a goal of $2,000 for 2014.
Some of the money was raised through a Rotary Dunk Tank in conjunction with the Antioch Lion’s Club Chicken Barbeque and Auction held this past July. Other funds were gathered through collection jars located around town at other community events.
Since 1987, Rotary International has been on the leading edge of polio eradication. To help raise awareness and raise critically needed funds, Oct. 24 has been declared World Polio Day.
The Antioch Rotary Club has been in on the fight for eradication of polio from the beginning. Over the past 27 years the club has hosted dozens of fundraisers and awareness events raising thousands of dollars.
On World Polio Day, members of Antioch’s Rotary Club will participate in a live-streamed global event presented by Rotary International. This multi-media event will provide an up-to-the-minute status update of how the polio eradication program is proceeding. Invited guests will include Rotary’s Global Polio Eradication Partners; celebrity ambassadors including Ziggy Marley; polio survivors including inspirational athlete Minda Dentler and Rotary members from around the world.
The $2,000 raised by the Antioch Rotary Club in 2014 has been sent to Rotary International, which serves as the volunteer fundraising arm of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, a public-private partnership that also includes the World Health Organization; the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention; UNICEF and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Antioch Rotary’s $2,000 donation was tripled to $6,000, thanks to a two-to-one match by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has partnered with Rotary International.
The Antioch Club’s donation comes at a critical time in the fight to eradicate disease. If the campaign is successful, polio would be only the second disease in human history to be eradicated. At this time people in only three nations on earth – Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan – need the inoculations.
Since 1988, the number of polio cases worldwide has been reduced more than 99 percent from 350,000 per year to 400 in 2013. In 2014, Southeast Asia was certified polio-free after India eliminated the disease from its borders, an incredible feat for a country once considered the hardest place on earth to stop polio.
However, in 2014, the Director General of the World Health Organization still declared polio to be a public health emergency of international concern. As such, the organization continues to urge polio-impacted countries to ensure that travelers leaving their borders are immunized against the disease.
For more information or to help with the fight against polio, visit www.endpolionow.org.