WE ARE THIS CLOSE TO ENDING POLIO

INDIA POLIO FREE!

After going an entire year without a new reported case of polio, India was removed from the list of polio-endemic countries by the World Health Organization (WHO). Ghulam Nabi Azad, India's minister of Health and Family Welfare, made the announcement at the Polio Summit 2012 in New Delhi on 25 February.

The news was a huge boost to the morale of Rotarians, who have been laboring to eradicate the crippling disease since 1985. Only three countries -- Nigeria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan -- remain on the polio-endemic list.

A chief contributor to India's success is the widespread use of the bivalent oral polio vaccine, which is effective against both remaining types of the poliovirus. Another is rigorous monitoring, which has helped reduce the number of children missed by health workers during National Immunization Days to less than 1 percent, according to WHO. The lessons learned in India may well serve to help immunization efforts in the remaining endemic countries.

In May, Rotarians at the RI Convention in Bangkok, Thailand, celebrated Rotary's having exceeded the US$200 Million Challenge for polio eradication efforts. The challenge was Rotary's response to $355 million in matching grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

But the work is far from complete, because worldwide eradication has not yet been achieved. Later in the year, Rotary launched an online petition drive to urge government leaders to continue funding the Global Polio Eradication Initiative's efforts. And in October, RI launched the World’s Biggest Commercial, which enables people visiting the new End Polio Now website to add their photo and join the effort to make history.