Rotary updated on polio eradication effort

By submitted, 11/30/22 11:13 AM

PRESCOTT – Jennifer Dillaha, director and state health officer with the Arkansas Department of Health, updated the Prescott Rotary Club on the progress toward eradicating polio world-wide.

She told the club the last case of polio in the US was in 1979, and the disease was eliminated in the Western Hemisphere in 1991.

Rotary got involved as part of the club’s new Health, Hunger and Humanity program, with 48-member committee representing 18 nations. There were three co-chairs who met in 1978 to draft the blueprint and in 1979, Rotary committed to buy and help deliver vaccine to six million children in the Philippines.

In 1985, Rotary’s PolioPlus Campaign launched, and in 1988 the global polio eradication initiative was formed with Rotary, the World Health Organization, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UNICEF, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation an governments of the world. Rotary’s focus in on advocacy, fundraising, volunteer recruitment and building awareness.

While the effort has been largely successful, Wild Poliovirus remains endemic in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 2021, both nations, though reported a sharp decline in WPV1 cases.

Also in 2021, bivalent oral polio vaccine, 726 million doses; inactivated polio vaccine, 17 million doses, monovalent oral polio vaccine, 628 million doses, trivalent oral polio vaccine, 51 million doses were distributed to 30 countries for use during 94 supplementary immunization activities.

Circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus has been identified in more than 30 countries. In June 2022, it was confirmed in an unvaccinated immunocompetent adult in New York who’d been hospitalized for leg weakness.

Rotary, she said, has contributed more than $2.1 billion and countless volunteer hours to protect nearly three billion children in 122 countries from polio. The organization’s efforts have played a role in decisions by governments to contribute more than $10 billion to the effort. However, if all eradication efforts stopped now, within 10 years polio could paralyze as many as 200,000 children a year