Photo shows Jonathan Majiyagbe Chairman of Trustees Rotary Foundation, Mrs Usha Mittal, Mr Lakshmi Mittal and Mrs Rajashree Birla.
Usha Mittal, wife of a prominent UK based businessman Lakshmi Mittal, has been honoured for her extraordinary US$1 million donation to Rotary’s effort to end polio worldwide.
Mrs Mittal, married to the founder of the the world’s largest steelmaker ArcelorMittal, made the generous contribution to Rotary’s charity The Rotary Foundation in support of the organisation’s current effort to raise US$200 million for polio eradication.
In a reception at London’s House of Lords on Wednesday 6th May, Rotary Foundation Chairman Jonathan B. Majiyagbe praised Mrs Mittal as a significant major donor to the Foundation, inducting her into the Arch C. Klumph Society.
Rotary’s End Polio Now campaign is raising the US$200 million in response to a US$355 million challenge grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The resulting $555 million will fund polio eradication activities in developing countries where the crippling disease still infects children, including India, the Mittals’ home country. Since 1985, Rotary has contributed more than $800 million in support of polio eradication. In addition, individual Rotary members have contributed countless volunteer hours to help vaccinate more than two billion children, preventing five million cases of paralysis and 250,000 pediatric deaths.
Mrs Mittal said: “Polio is a devastating disease which still continues to cripple children in some vast populated areas of the world namely India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria, the four remaining countries where the virus is still endemic.
“It is a disease for which there is no cure, yet a child can be protected for life with oral vaccine drops and/or a simple IPV vaccine. I hope that my contribution to the Rotary Foundation will help their tremendous challenge to end polio worldwide and that one day we will be able to live in a world where lives are no longer ruined by this terrible disease".
Jonathan Majiyagbe, chair of The Rotary Foundation, said: “I am privileged to be able to recognize Mrs. Mittal for her outstanding contribution to global polio eradication. Through her dedication, we are one step closer to a polio-free world.”
Also attending the London reception was Rajashree Birla, another major supporter of Rotary’s polio eradication efforts. In May 2008, Mrs Birla arranged a meeting with Usha Mittal to discuss polio eradication. Usha Mittal responded with a $1 million contribution to the challenge. These gifts from Mrs. Birla and Mrs. Mittal reflect the strong support the polio eradication initiative has received over the years from Indian Rotary clubs, the Indian government, the Indian public in general, and private citizens.
A highly infectious disease that can cause paralysis and sometimes death, polio still strikes children in parts of Africa and South Asia. As there is no cure, the best protection is prevention. For as little as 60 cents worth of vaccine, a child can be protected against this crippling disease for life.
To date, the number of polio cases has been reduced from 350,000 children annually in the mid-1980s to less than 2,000 reported cases all last year.
Rotary made polio eradication its top philanthropic goal in 1985. Rotary is the lead private sector contributor and volunteer arm of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative — a public/private partnership spearheaded by World Health Organization (WHO), Rotary International, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and UNICEF.
To date, more than two billion children have been immunized against the paralyzing and sometimes deadly poliovirus. Tremendous progress has been made in the last two decades, as polio cases have declined by 99 percent. Yet, challenges remain in the four polio-endemic countries: India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria.
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12/05/09
