The world leader of Rotary international President Kalyan Banerjee has told of the staggering success of the movement’s war on polio. At an event at St George’s House, Windsor Castle to mark the near eradication of polio in India, he said he had also enlisted the support of the President of Pakistan to help achieve the goal of banishing the illness which used to strike down hundreds of thousands every year.
Rotary International President Kalyan Banerjee, Rotarians and guests from all over the world affirm that we are "this close" to a polio free world at a charity dinner held at Vicars’ Hall, St.George’s House, Windsor Castle, Windsor UK on March 9th 2012.
Picture courtesy of Maureen Mclean Photography – With the kind permission of the Dean and Canons of Windsor.
The charity dinner was attended by Home Secretary Rt Hon Theresa May, Rt Rev David Conner, Dean of Windsor, Air Marshal Ian Macfadyen, Governor of Windsor Castle, and keynote speaker Fergus Walsh who, as the BBC’s Medical Correspondent, had travelled with RIBI Rotarians to India in February to cover the recent National Immunisation Day. His films are available to watch here.
Rotary has raised £630million and 2.5 billion children have been immunised.The number of cases per day throughout the world has dropped since 1985 from more than 1,000 to just two. India has just been removed from the endemic country list and must be disease free for two years before being declared officially polio free.
Kalyan Banerjee, who as President of Rotary International has personally campaigned to banish polio in his home country of India, personally thanked every person who attended the gathering at Windsor Castle. He said: "It is a devastating disease that can sentence an innocent child to a lifetime of poverty and suffering.
"As I travel the Rotary world I am often struck by the dedication of Rotarians in places like the United Kingdom. Places where polio has become a faded memory. Places where it exists only in the form of stories that grandparents tell their children and grandchildren, something distant, muted, no longer fully tangible.
"I urge you to continue to tell the story of polio eradication because we must protect the hard won gains in India and in more than 200 countries which are currently polio free. Children everywhere remain at risk until polio is completely eradicated."
BBC Medical Correspondent Fergus Walsh was the keynote speaker at the Windsor Castle dinner. He told how his BBC news dispatch from India on the success of the Rotary immunisation programme captured the spirit of how Rotarians from Britain had embraced the awesome task of beating polio. His film showed Rotary volunteers giving immunisation drops to children. Over 24-hours, the coverage of Rotary’s commitment and success in the battle against polio was aired on BBC national and worldwide television news, radio and digital sites.
Mr Walsh said: "The fact that India has been taken off the list of polio-endemic countries is a remarkable achievement which took political will, determination and dedication from immunization teams. Rotary International has been at the forefront of the campaign to rid the world of the terrible disease and so the success in India is in no small part due to the work of tens of thousands of Rotarians across the world. I was delighted to address the dinner at Windsor Castle and celebrate the milestone of India becoming polio-free. The world is at a cross-roads with polio: if the success in India is built upon, then polio could be eradicated just as smallpox was a generation ago. Failure would mean that millions of children around the world would be vulnerable to this disabling and potentially fatal condition."
Mihir Bose, broadcaster and London Evening Standard writer and columnist, said: "India’s eradication of polio, which was a disease we all feared when I was a child growing up in the country, could not have been celebrated more appropriately than the evening at Windsor Castle. What the evening succeeded in doing did was to remind us of the tremendous voluntary effort that has gone into this achievement from Rotarians round the world, not least this country.
"But, as Fergus Walsh the BBC’s medical correspondent reminded us, while India is free from polio it is surrounded by countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan that are not. And as with democracy the price of making sure it does not return must be eternal vigilance and continuous voluntary effort."
If you would like to help the Rotary End Polio Now campaign, contact your local Rotary club and discover how you can makde a difference whilst
