On the Brink

After 20 years of hard work, Rotary and its partners are on the brink of eradicating this tenacious disease, but a strong push is needed now to root it out once and for all. It is a window of opportunity of historic proportions.

Your contribution will help Rotary match a $100 million challenge grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The resulting $200 million will directly support immunization campaigns in developing countries, where polio continues to infect and paralyze children, robbing them of their futures and compounding the hardships faced by their families.

As long as polio threatens even one child anywhere in the world, children everywhere remain at risk. The stakes are that high. By donating now, you can help Rotary achieve a polio-free world.

Status of Polio Cases

5 new cases are reported the last week of December for the year 2008. P3 - 5 (1 from Bihar and 4 from U.P.) The total polio case count in 2008 is 546 (P1- 66 and P3-480).

The status of Polio cases is as under:

Year 2004 = 134 wild Polio cases
Year 2005 = 66 wild Polio cases
Year 2006 = 676 wild Polio cases
Year 2007 = 874 wild Polio cases
Year 2008 = 546 wild Polio cases for the year 2008 (as on December 26, 2008 from 90 Revenue Districts)

(To be noted: 2008 count is lower than 2007 and 2006, but it is much much higher than 2005 and 2004)

Then DG Marlene Brown takes part in Delhi, India NIDS (view slideshow)

Four key strategies for stopping poliovirus transmission:

Routine immunization: High infant-immunization coverage with four doses of oral polio vaccine (OPV) in the first year of life is critical. Routine immunization is essential because it’s the primary way that polio-free countries protect their children from the threat of imported polio.

National Immunization Days: For decades, Rotary’s PolioPlus program has been one of the driving forces during National Immunization Days, or NIDs. Rotarians are involved in myriad ways before, during, and after an NID, by providing funds for millions of drops of vaccine, promoting upcoming campaigns in the community, distributing vaccine to local health centers, serving as monitors, working with local officials to reach every child, and participating in surveillance efforts.

Surveillance: Rotarians play an important role in working with health workers, pediatricians, and others to find, report, and investigate cases of acute flaccid paralysis in timely manner (ideally within 48 hours of onset). PolioPlus sometimes helps fund containers that preserve the integrity of stool samples during transport to laboratories. The program has also played a leading role in providing equipment for the global poliovirus laboratory.

Targeted mop-up campaigns: Rotary’s support of mop-up campaigns is similar to NID volunteering, but on a smaller, often “house-to-house,” scale.

Progress in curbing type 1 poliovirus continues

Wide-scale use of monovalent oral polio vaccine type 1 (mOPV1) continues to have a significant impact on curbing transmission of this particular virus serotype. It is the more dangerous of the two remaining virus types, given its historically higher disease burden and ability to spread internationally. Only three type 1 cases have been reported this year from the western part of Uttar Pradesh state, India, arguably the most historically entrenched type 1 reservoir in the world.

At the same time, no type 1 cases have been reported in Kano, Nigeria, since October 2006 – a remarkable achievement, given that Kano was the epicenter of a major international epidemic which re-infected 20 previously polio-free countries in 2003-2006.

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