Thursday, October 24 is World Polio Day. The 5th annual event was hosted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, with a goal of bringing more than 100,000 viewers together around the world. Rotary International is dedicated to eliminating the disease. For every dollar raised by Rotary, the foundation will donate two. Charlie Maddox is president of the Rotary Club of Athens. He says polio has gone from a disease people used to fear to a disease most people in the world never think about.
“The number one project for Rotary International is to eradicate Polio,” according to Maddox. “We have Rotary clubs in 250 countries around the world, more that the United nations.”
Maddox says there are five reasons to eliminate Polio.
“To improve the lives of millions of people that are waiting to be healed, to invest in the future of our country and our world, to improve children’s health, to save money-the cost of treatment and the cost of inoculation is so vastly different and the last one is to make history and eradicate this terrible disease that has ravaged so many people throughout so many countries in the world.”
In 1988 there were an estimated 350,000 cases of Polio, in 2017, there less than two dozen worldwide.
Currently, the only places where polio is still present are: Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.
