Personal Social Responsibility
By PP Dieter Brückner
For me the best reason to have joined Rotary International 1984 in La Paz, Bolivia and 1984 RC Makati North, was to realize my active participation in one of the most succesful health prhrams undertaken jointly by governments and the private sector ever.
On a sunny afternoon on 29 of September 1979, then-RI President James L. Bomar Jr. put the first drops of vaccine into a child's mouth and Rotarians and dEnrique M. Garcia of the Philippine Ministry of Health looked on as volunteers administered drops of the lifesaving Sabin polio vaccine to about 100 children in the Manila barrio of Guadalupe Viejo.
A contract was signed committing Rotary International and the government of the Philippines to the joint five-year effort to immunize about six million children against polio in a US$760,000 immunization drive.
Spurred by the success of the programme in this and other poor countries, Rotary worked with Dr. Sabin on a plan to immunize all children against polio. This gave rise to Rotary’s PolioPlus programme in 1985. Rotarians have helped since immunize more than 2 billion children against polio in 122 countries. For as little as $0.60, a child can be protected against this crippling disease for life.
In a 1993 interview, Bomar reminisced about the trip. He recalled how the brother of one of the children he had immunized tugged on his pant leg to get his attention, and said, “Thank you, thank you, Rotary.”
On the 30th anniversary of the first 3-H grant, that campaign is moving forward as strongly as ever. Through the work of Rotary and its partners, the number of polio cases has been slashed by more than 99 percent. When Rotary began its eradication work, polio infected more than 350,000 children annually. In 2008, fewer than 2,000 cases were reported worldwide.
Then, our very own RID Paing Echanova was one of the key implementors of the Polio PLUS campaign and this morning of October 26, 2014 we proudly could hear from himself how this campaign gained wordlwide instant support. And now more than ever, we need your contribution to the AROTARY FOUNDATION and erradicate definitely this virus from the earth.
