This image comes from today’s ‘Google Doodle’ which celebrates the 100th anniversary of Dr. Jonas Salk.
On the 28th October 1914, Jonas Salk was born – a man who would change world history by inventing the first effective vaccine against polio. When the vaccine was introduced in the United States in the 1950s, polls indicated that polio was one of the nation’s two greatest fears, second only to the fear of atomic war.
And with good reason: In the 1952 U.S. polio epidemic, 58,000 cases were reported, with 3,145 deaths and 21,269 instances of permanent, disabling paralysis. Globally, polio paralyzed or killed up to half a million people every year.
Soon after the Salk vaccine was created, Albert Sabin developed an oral version, allowing tremendous numbers of children to be immunized quickly, safely and inexpensively. In 1985, Rotary’s PolioPlus program was born, with a simple goal: to immunize every child under age 5 against this crippling disease. Thanks in large part to the initial success of PolioPlus, in 1988 the 166 member states of the World Health Assembly unanimously set the goal of global polio eradication.
At the time, the idea was breathtakingly ambitious, and many called it impossible. Today, we are closer to this goal than ever before, with only a few hundred cases of polio reported per year, and just three remaining endemic countries. We are on track to achieve full eradication by 2018 – if we can keep up the momentum that has brought us this far.
This month have marked World Polio Day and today celebrate the 100th anniversary of Dr. Salk’s birth. Rotarians have contributed $1.3 billion to the efforts to eradicate polio and many local Rotarians have traveled to endemic countries to participate in the massive immunization efforts whereby millions of children under the age of 5 received two drops of the polio vaccine.
Rotary and its partners will make history by eradicating Polio from the face of the Earth. We are this close.
