30-year polio fight focuses on three places

Polio most commonly affects children under the age of 5. The virus is spread person to person, typically through contaminated water. It can attack the nervous system and lead to paralysis. By 1979, polio was declared eradicated in the United States.

Rotary put the coalition together to begin the global eradication effort, said Burton, a member of the Rotary Club of Norman, who retired as president of the University of Oklahoma Foundation Inc. in 2007.

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative came together as a partnership between Rotary, the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and UNICEF. In 2007, the initiative gained a fifth partner — the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Bill Gates, speaking at the Rotary International Convention in June in Atlanta, talked about why it is so difficult to eradicate polio. All 7.5 billion people on the planet must be free of the disease and stay that way for three years to ensure polio doesn’t return to countries where it has been eliminated, he said.

“That includes places where there is war. That includes countries where public health systems are virtually nonexistent,” Gates said. It means reaching children in the “most difficult places on Earth, not just once” but as many times as necessary to ensure that they are protected.

Persistence also includes innovation, new ideas and adapting to unforeseen circumstances, Gates said. He lauded the volunteers and health workers who sacrificed their lives in conflict areas of political, religious and social division to get children vaccinated.

Burton said Rotary has been raising $35 million each year and the Gates Foundation has been matching that with $70 million. This year Gates challenged Rotary to raise $50 million and pledged a $100 million match.

“We will finish this job, I promise you,” Burton said, “and then we’ve got to decide what we do next.”

Rotary’s fifth annual World Polio Day event will stream live Oct. 24 from Gates Foundation headquarters in Seattle. Global health experts and celebrities will share the progress on the road to polio eradication.