Did you get a chance to join the District Training Assembly on Polio on the 17
th? Secretary Chris has recorded the session (
https://vimeo.com/634691662/1aaf509bd0) so you can hear Dr. Deepak Purohit PDG. Lucid and complete, it is a briefing on polio eradication and the involvement of Rotary that we all should be aware of.
Until you get a chance to listen, here’s a simple question that Secretary Chris asked and the somewhat more complicated answer.
Why do we need to keep raising money to irradicate polio when there are currently only two cases of polio in the world?
In India there are millions of children and no cases of polio for the last 10 years, but we are still immunizing all children. It is the same throughout the world. The important thing is that, where there is one case of polio anywhere in the world, every child in the world is at risk of polio myelitis unless they are vaccinated. Even if there are billions of children, they all need to be vaccinated.
So (1), we need money to continue to vaccinate for as long as there is polio in the world.
And (2), we need money to continue research. Although there are only two cases of wild polio, there are 300 cases of vaccine-derived polio in the world. The need also is to develop another vaccine. A polyvalent vaccine covers all three strains of polio: PV1, PV2, and PV3. PV1 and PV3 viruses are already extinct, so we now need a new monovalent vaccine against PV2.
In areas where there is no oral vaccine available, or where there are cases of vaccine-derived polio, vaccinations must be delivered by injection. This is from 10 to 20 times more costly than oral vaccines.
