Editor:
A recent article [in today's Senty, page 20] reported that Rotary International has received a $100 million gift from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to continue its battle to eradicate polio from the face of the earth. This small bit of news in Greater Portland has been a mammoth piece of news in other parts of the world.
Rotary International began its campaign to eradicate polio in 1985 when it announced the organization’s commitment to the children of the world. The late Rotary Governor, Sarando P. (“Sam”) Giftos of Cape Elizabeth, a retired Portland High school teacher and local accountant, returned from an international meeting with the report to local Rotary clubs that the Rotarians at the meeting had committed Rotary to buy vaccine to immunize every child on earth. It seemed, at the time, like an impossible commitment to fulfill.
Since that time, and with the money from the Gates gift and its match, Rotary International’s charitable foundation will have contributed, over the 22 years, more than $830,000,000 to the worldwide polio eradication effort, a majority of this money coming from individual Rotary club members.
Rotarians in Maine have contributed generously to this effort. Perhaps more importantly, many of these Maine community volunteers, joining with thousands of Rotary volunteers from around the world, also have traveled, at their own expense, to places like India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Nigeria, Cameron, Ghana, Togo, Egypt, and every other corner of the world, to administer polio vaccine in state-sponsored National Immunization Days. Billions of children have been immunized through these efforts.
The last few hundred annual polio cases are the most difficult to extinguish. Little corners in India, Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan continue to report a few hundred cases of wild polio virus infections – “few” in relation to the thousands of annual cases when this campaign began, but devastating to parents and families who see their children wither and die. Rotarians remain totally committed to eradication of the wild polio virus.
“Rotarians” – you perhaps know them as the volunteers who stand out in the freezing cold selling Christmas trees each year at Millcreek Park in South Portland to raise money for local charitable efforts. Some of that money has gone to polio eradication. Why not stop by Millcreek Park and say hello to these community volunteers?
Dan Mooers, South Portland
Regional Coordinator, Rotary International PolioPlus Partners Program
Past Rotary International Director