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Rotary makes first disbursement from Gates Foundation grant - 14/09/2008

Rotarians and students rally in support of India’s February Nids

Nine countries and two World Health Organization regions have received The Rotary Foundation’s first distribution from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s US$100 million challenge grant for polio eradication.

WHO and UNICEF are using the funds, disbursed in January, to carry out immunization activities in the four polioendemic countries — Afghanistan, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan — plus five others where “imported” polio cases have been reported. WHO is also funding surveillance and technical support in its African and Eastern Mediterranean regions.

Following the grant distribution, a team of 54 Rotarians and friends from Australia, Canada, France, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States helped carry out India’s National Immunization Days, reaching more than 170 million children in February. RI Director Kjell-Åke Åkesson of Sweden participated in the NIDs, as did Rotary Foundation Trustee Carolyn Jones.

Joined by members of the Rotary Club of Delhi-West and almost 100 PolioPlus cap-wearing students from a local Rotary club-sponsored school, the team took part in a rally in Sohna to promote the NIDs. Many of the students, and one of the Delhi-West Rotarians, are themselves polio victims.

“It is the most amazingly exhilarating and dramatically humbling experience,” reported Mark Brown, a member of the Rotary Club of St. John’s Northwest, Newfoundland, Canada, on the team’s blog (rotarydreamteam-india2008.blogspot.com). “Immediately, we were poured on by people wanting their children vaccinated.

No time to ponder. Just two drops in each child’s mouth and a permanent marker on the finger to show they’d been done.”

“Now is the time to step up the momentum to get polio out of India forever,” says Deepak Kapur, chair of India’s PolioPlus committee.