Let’s keep the spotlight on polio: RID Basker

In a comprehensive address delivered at the National Polio Plus and MR Orientation meet held in Delhi last month that succinctly captured Rotary’s polio story over some four decades, RI Director Basker linked the eradication of polio from India to the steady growth and development of India in the last couple of decades.

India stood at a “critical phase of transformation compared to some 40 years ago. In those days the perception was that in India we burn our brides or that India has no electricity. But this is changing mainly because we are such hardworking people… we’ve become the second largest steel producer in the world after China, and today the motor car is no longer a luxury here. What is more, for over three years, we haven’t borrowed a single rupee from the World Bank. Our health care infrastructure has improved tremendously and thanks to Rotary, polio has been eradicated from India, when the rest of the world was so sceptical of our doing so,” he said amidst applause.

But he cautioned the assembled senior Rotary leaders from India, including DGs and PDGs, that on the polio front we needed to be extremely careful till our neighbours — both ­Afghanistan and Pakistan, continued to report polio cases as the virus can easily cross borders.

Giving the assembled Rotary leaders a sense of the magnitude of work that Rotarians have done on the polio front across the world, Basker said that in 1988, when the global polio eradication campaign was launched, there were 350,000 cases of polio reported every year from 125 countries. Since then, Rotary and its partners — UNICEF, WHO, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the governments of the world, etc — had all come together to immunise 2.5 billion children every year. “Because of the immunisation that we all did 16 million people are walking today who would otherwise have been paralysed. In addition, Rotary has committed over $1.7 billion and contributed millions of volunteer hours to actively participate in the polio eradication campaign.”

The result was that compared to 37 cases of polio reported in three countries — Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2016, and 22 cases in 2017, as of July 26, only 13 cases of polio have been reported in 2018. “This means that we have managed to eradicate 99.9 per cent of polio from the world. For most other things, a 99.9 per cent result would be a remarkable success story. But for polio, nothing short of cent per cent success rate can be called a victory.”

Underlining the danger of complacency that we could now relax as India is polio-free, the RI Director warned the assembled Rotarians that “within 10 years the world could see as many as 200,000 new cases every year if we do not reach zero cases soon. Rotary can’t stop until our world is certified polio-free. That is why it takes at least three years to get such a certificate after no cases have been reported from a country.”

As polio continued to be a challenge till the entire world was reported polio-free, at the Atlanta Convention last year RI had committed to raise $50 million annually over the next three years. “Do remember that every one dollar raised by us will be matched 2:1 by the Gates Foundation, so the total will translate into $450 million for polio eradication activities; not only for immunisation but also for mapping the environment for signs of the virus.”

Even though massive strides have been made across the world in eradicating polio, and “we are now down to only two remaining reservoirs — ­Nigeria and the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, this region is one of the most challenging and complex environments in the world,” Basker added. That is why Rotary had come up with innovations such as getting female vaccinators, involvement of religious leaders, special attention to vaccinating transit population, surveillance and checking of water supply and sewerage systems for any signs of the virus.

“But let’s not forget that our No 1 weapon against polio is the vaccine,” he said, adding that investment and experience in polio eradication has given Rotarians the tools to fight other preventable diseases such as measles, rubella, cholera etc.

To “ensure that our children and grandchildren live in a polio-free world, we will have to meet our global fundraising goal of $50 million a year for the next three years. We have to press the government for funding by writing to our legislators and bureaucrats. Remember that the $1.2 billion promised at Atlanta was only a pledge; we have to ensure follow up. We must keep polio in the spotlight in our clubs.”