World Immunization Week, 24-30 April, is an opportunity to focus on Rotary's work in the fight against Polio. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) estimates that polio vaccines have saved an estimated 20 million children around the world from paralysis.
When Rotary helped launch the GPEI in 1988, the disease paralyzed more than 1,000 people worldwide every day, most of them young children. Since then, Rotary and its partners have reduced the number of polio cases by 99%, and in 2021 there were just six cases of polio caused by the wild poliovirus. Afghanistan and Pakistan are the only two countries where the wild poliovirus remains endemic. Watch video "Every Vaccine counts"
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