Rotary Clubs inch closer to worldwide eradication of polio

Rotary Clubs around the world have been fighting polio disease since 1985.

Now 32 years later, the group of clubs is just two countries and five new cases away from eradicating the disease from Earth.

“It’s a pretty exciting time for Rotary members across the world,” said Medicine Hat Rotary Club member Sandy McKay. “Taking down polio has been a very, very long-term project for Rotary clubs, so seeing even just the possibility of polio being gone is very exciting for us.”

The spread and fight against polio began in the early 1980s, and over the years Rotary clubs have donated more than $1 billion toward the distribution of vaccines of the disease. The two countries with new cases of the disease are Pakistan and Afghanistan, and McKay says the clubs hope this year could be the last the disease will see.

“With just five new cases this year, we hope that if we can keep the vaccination programs in these two counties we can see an end to polio,” he said. “We’ve really worked our way through so many countries around the world and if we can work through these last two, this could be it for us.”

Though the group is close to eradicating the disease, McKay says it will be years before it knows if polio really pushed to being just part of history.

“We need to see no new cases for three years to consider this a complete win for us,” he said. “With a disease like polio that was so big in previous years, but now it is smaller, it’s hard to pinpoint exact cases — having a few years will let us know for sure the disease is gone.”

Once polio is gone McKay says it will be up to the Rotary Club to decide what task to take on next.

“With us donating more than $1 billion, once polio is gone we can put that elsewhere,” he said. “We took on small pox many years back, now we’re fighting polio, so what comes next will be a highly debated topic — we’ll have a few years to decide.”