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RadioRotary is visited, via Zoom, by 33-year Rotarian and 7210 Past District Governor (2006-07) Carole Tjoa, a member of the North Rockland Rotary Club and currently the District PolioPlus Chair. Mrs. Tjoa tells the story of how Rotary, when polio was completely eliminated from the U.S. in 1979, took the vaccines that stopped the disease to the Philippines and on September 29 began its long association with polio eradication. Rotary spent about $760,000 to immunize 6 million children in the Philippines; polio was then often called \u201cjuvenile paralysis\u201d because its primary victims were often less than 5 years old. The success of the Philippine project led Rotary to launch PolioPlus in 1985 with the goal of worldwide elimination. Soon joined by the CDC, WHO, and UNICEF and later by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the immunization program since then has spent  $10 billion to immunize more than 2.5 billion children, eliminating wild polio virus from everywhere but Pakistan and Afghanistan, which continue to have fewer than 200 cases annually between them. IN 1988 when Global Polio Eradication started, there had been 350,000 cases. Listen and learn more, both about polio and the remarkable life of Rotarian Carole Tjoa.

Learn more:

Global Polio Eradication Initiative: https://polioeradication.org/

PolioPlus: https://www.endpolio.org/

The Plus in PolioPlus: https://www.rotary.org/en/plus-polioplus

The Rotary Foundation: https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=4553https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=4553

Rotary District 7210: https://rotarydistrict7210.org/

North Rockland Rotary Club: https://northrocklandrotary.org/

CATEGORIES

Global Polio Initiative

Health

International Programs

PolioPlus