Rotary committing USD$75 million to end polio
Baku, September 28 (AZERTAC). A major funding announcement will be made during the UN General Assembly session to rally support for global eradication of crippling childhood disease.
Rotary International will contribute USD $75 million over three years to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative as part of a world-wide effort to close a $945 million funding gap that threatens to derail the 24 year-old global health effort, even as new polio cases are at an all-time low.
Rotary, which already has contributed USD$1.2 billion to stop this crippling childhood disease, will announce its new funding commitment in New York today (September 27) during a special side-event on polio eradication, convened by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon during the 67th Session of the UN General Assembly.
Secretary-General Ban, who has made polio eradication a top priority of his second term, is expected to issue a strong call urging UN member states to ramp up their support for the End Polio Now initiative, launched in 1988 by Rotary, the World Health Organisation, UNICEF, and the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. The partnership now includes the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the United Nations Foundation.
The New York event will include two panel sessions, with contributions from Wilf Wilkinson, chair of The Rotary Foundation; Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; and top leaders and heads of state from the remaining polio-endemic countries and key donor countries. The wild poliovirus is now endemic only to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria, although other countries remain at risk for re-established cases imported from the endemics.
“It is imperative that governments step up and honour their commitments to polio eradication if we are to achieve our goal of a polio-free world,” said Wilkinson. “We are at a true tipping point, with success never closer than it is right now. We must seize the advantage by acting immediately, or risk breaking our pledge to the world`s children.”
The urgency at the UN follows action taken in May by the World Health Assembly, which declared polio eradication to be a “programmatic emergency for global public health.” Although new polio cases are at an all-time low, fewer than 140 worldwide so far this year, the USD$945 million shortfall has already affected several scheduled immunization activities in polio-affected countries and could derail the entire program unless the gap is bridged. If eradication fails and polio rebounds, up to 200,000 children a year could be paralysed and crippled for life.
Earlier this year, Rotary clubs across the world, including Great Britian and Ireland, raised $228 million in new money for polio eradication in response to a $355 million challenge grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which promptly contributed an additional $50 million in recognition of Rotary`s commitment.
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