Kelowna, Penticton Rotary clubs work to eradicate polio – Okanagan

The Penticton and Kelowna Rotary golf equipment are working to boost funds to assist eradicate polio worldwide.

Oct. 24 is World Polio Day.

“Polio has been with us for a very long time,” Sandra Henderson, a spokesperson for the Penticton Dawn Rotary Membership, stated in a information launch.

“These sufficiently old will recall getting vaccinations on a sugar dice and different strategies at college within the Nineteen Fifties and Sixties. Additionally, you will bear in mind the ‘iron lung’ machine used to help sufferers unlucky sufficient to contract polio.”

Henderson stated the Invoice and Melinda Gates Basis has matched Rotary Worldwide’s monetary help for its polio program because the early Nineteen Eighties.

“Vaccinations with the financial help have resulted in a decline in polio plus program to solely two reported circumstances in 2021,” Henderson stated.

“All present circumstances are within the Afghanistan/Pakistan areas. Africa, for instance, has been polio-free for a couple of years now.”

In line with Rotary Worldwide, the Canadian federal authorities has invested practically $1 billion to eradicate the illness.

“Because the begin of the COVID-19 pandemic, the polio infrastructure Canada helped construct has been used to reply to COVID-19,” Rotary Worldwide stated on its web site.

“Polio eradication belongings together with illness surveillance, information administration, threat communication, group mobilization, and coordination constructions have been utilized in no less than 55 nations.”

2:20
COVID-19 parallels: polio catastrophe helped form vaccine security in Nineteen Fifties