Rotarians raise £200 to help fund polio vaccinations

MORE than £200 was raised by Henley Rotary Club to fund polio vaccinations in developing countries.

Members of the Henley branch gave out a few crocus corms when they were fundraising in Market Place to mark World Polio Day, part of Rotary International’s drive to eradicate polio, last Friday.

The funds were matched by a donation from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, bringing the total donated to the Rotary’s End Polio Now campaign to £621.

Jeremy Gaunt, president of the club, said he had been approached by residents who knew people impacted by the virus, which was eradicated from the UK in 2003.

He said: “It’s been very good today, what has been very interesting is a number of people have talked about people they know who had polio or who still have it if they’re alive.

“Its not so far in the past that a lot of people haven’t remembered it. The positive thing is that some of the younger people have never heard of polio, which may reflect the fact that it’s been eradicated in so many places.

“There is a danger in the sense that if people don’t get vaccinated in other countries, if people say ‘oh, it’s over’ then it will just come steaming back.”

In July last year, the Gaza health ministry declared a polio epidemic amid a humanitarian crisis caused by the conflict with Israel, with a 10-month-old child being paralysed.

Three years ago, traces of polio were detected during a routine sewage inspection in London, leading the UK Health Security Agency to declare a national incident. Mr Gaunt said it is important to educate younger generations about the virus and the importance of vaccination programmes to prevent its return.

He said: “You have to keep up the momentum of vaccinating children and making sure they don’t get it and then slowly but surely it dies out.

“What we’re doing at the moment is we’re raising money to keep it going as part of big international programmes where Rotarians and others go around the world and they immunise children.

“The End Polio Now campaign uses World Polio Day, which is a UN day, as a way of attracting attention to it.”

Sadaf Khalid, who is originally from Pakistan, joined the club this year. She said misconceptions and conspiracies about the polio vaccine pose a challenge to those working to immunise the country’s rural population. The End Polio Now campaign was launched in the Eighties and has worked with the World Health Organisation, UNICEF and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as part of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.

The virus now remains endemic in only Afghanistan and Pakistan thanks to a global vaccination campaign, which has reduced cases by 99.9 per cent since 1988.

The purple crocus flower has become the symbol of the global campaign, with about seven million corms being planted across the country each year to raise awareness for the cause.

Last week, the World Health Organisation said that the Global Polio Eradication Initiative would face a 30 per cent budget reduction in 2026 and £1.7bn funding gap through to 2029, largely due to foreign aid cuts.