World Immunization Week is April 24-30th. Rotary International has spent over 40 years making sure children receive life-saving polio vaccines, beginning with our first immunization campaign in the Philippines in 1979. Three Members of Brookline Rotary ~ all Past Presidents & Paul Harris Fellows -- share their thoughts & experiences volunteering for END POLIO NOW.Image: Sharon Herman, Rotary Club of Brookline.
Susan Rack: I had the monumental good fortune to participate in a Polio Immunization trip to India with two of my fellow Brookline Rotarians in 2018. This trip literally saved lives and everyone associated with the trip, including the families receiving the vaccine, knew it and were overwhelmed.Though I have done a fair amount of globe trotting, this will always be a seminal trip. Forever in my memory are: sharing with Rotarians from across the US, Canada, Australia, England and the Netherlands, the experience of participating in a loud, musical street parade to promote immunization in the crowded streets of Agra; joining the multi-cultural and multi-lingual team of 6 administering oral vaccines to babies and children in a farming community that welcomed us into their homes and thanked us for coming with tea and biscuits; joining students and teachers in the Macarana at a school built by local Rotarians; and sitting together for a photo in front of the Taj Mahal. Image: Susan Rack, Rotary Club of Brookline.
Sharon Herman added: We also partnered with WHO and Rotary clubs in India and worked with teachers to provide and administer the polio drops.
Joyce Graff, DG-Elect 2024-2025: Polio has been with us on the planet for thousands of years, seen in Egyptian paintings and mummies. In the mid-20th Century families in the United States were terrified. My father would not allow us to go to public swimming pools for fear that we would catch polio. No one understood how it was transmitted, or how to protect your children. My mother was afraid when I fell off the couch that it would cause me to get polio. Image: Joyce Graff, Rotary Club of Brookline.In 1953 Dr. Jonas Salk of Pittsburgh began testing his experimental killed-virus vaccine on himself and his family, and a year later on 1.6 million children in Canada, Finland and the USA. The results were announced on 12 April 1955, and Salk's inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) was licensed on the same day. [World Health Organization] Elvis Presley got vaccinated very much in public to help the Easter Seals Foundation promote vaccination. Queen Elizabeth had her children, Charles and Anne, vaccinated to reassure the British public. Parents lined up around the block to vaccinate their children -- the first time there was a way to really protect your child.
In 1979 one Rotary Club in the Philippines decided to work to eliminate this terrible threat from their chain of islands. With a grant from Rotary International they vaccinated children throughout their island nation and passed laws to protect their border.
Rotary launched PolioPlus in 1985 and was a founding member of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in 1988. Through decades of work and partnerships with the World Health Organization, the United Nations, and countless non-governmental organizations worldwide, Rotary has trained volunteer healthcare workers and developed diagnostic clinics worldwide. In each country they have developed agreements with the local governments to continue vaccinating every child until polio has been eliminated from the planet.
Today in Boston, on the walls of Tufts New England Hospital there are photos of the Tufts Floating Hospital for Children -- a ship moored in Boston Harbor -- with wall to wall iron lungs, each helping a polio victim to breathe. Children who could breathe on their own could get physical therapy in the cool sea air, a respite from the heat of summer.
We are at a pivotal moment. We have the opportunity today to eliminate this virus from the planet once and for all. https://www.endpolio.org/