Carmi Rotary Club meeting
The Carmi Rotary club welcomed Rotary District Polio Plus Chair, Mary Jo Nowobilski as the day’s speaker at this week’s meeting.
Mary Jo came to Carmi from her home club in O’Fallon. She and her husband Mike have been involved at a district level in Rotary for many years, and have been especially active in the Polio Plus program
As Mary Jo explained, Polio Plus was the first global project taken on by Rotary International. The project came to life in 1988, when Rotary teamed with the World Health Organization, the CDC, and UNICEFF to take on the horrible disease. It was a disease that needed to be wiped off the face of the earth.
In 1952 there were 58,000 cases of polio in the US alone. By 1979, thanks to immunizations, the US officially became polio free. However, in 1985, there were still 350,000 new cases across the globe.
To combat this issue, Rotary and the other organizations set a goal of raising one hundred, twenty million dollars in 1988. At the year-end conference, each of the forty countries took turns announcing what they had raised toward that goal. The USA went last, and to a hushed crowd, the US ambassador announced that America had raised one hundred and nineteen million on its own, making the world-wide total a whopping two hundred, twenty million dollars.
A few years later, Bill and Linda Gates entered the project vowing to match the Rotary’s contributions. So far, with the Gate’s Foundation included, Rotary has raised one point eight billion dollars!
In 2017, there were only nineteen new cases of polio reported world-wide. Fifteen of those cases were in Afghanistan and four in Pakistan. These countries have proven very tough places to reach, due to the remote locations and due to a misinformation campaign that has tried to convince some of the illiterate remote villagers that the vaccine is actually a sterilization tool being used against the Muslim population.
Unfortunately for the rest of the world, polio is always just one plane ride away. Until there are zero new cases, this deadly scourge can flash to life at any time.
To reach the ultimate goal of a polio free world, it is estimated that another seven billion dollars will be needed. The Gates foundation has stepped up to the plate again for this goal, announcing they will match two to one (up to fifty million dollars) anything the Rotary raises.
On a local note, in 1988 when the project started, the Carmi Rotary club donated one hundred thousand dollars to the fund! This was an amazing number for such a small club.
In club business, the Rotarians discussed the upcoming trivia contest.
This Carmi Rotary Club’s event will take place on Saturday, November 3rd, when they host the Fall trivia contest. This year’s event will be at the American Legion on Oak Street, and the first question will be thrown out at 6:00pm. Cost for a four-person team is only forty dollars, and there will be plenty to eat and drink and cash prizes to the top three teams.
