A group of Rotarians from District 9930 – which incorporates the heart of the North Island – travelled by train to Auckland to mark World Polio Day on October 24.
Cambridge Rotarians Bill and Deb Robinson joined others who travelled the train tracks last month to spready the word about polio.
Dressed in red ‘End Polio Now’ t-shirts, Rotarians took the Te Huia train to join Auckland Rotarians in travelling every line on the city’s rail system.
District 9930 board secretary and past district governor Bill Robinson said it was amazing seeing the reactions from the public, “some not knowing what polio is as they never grew up with knowledge of the disease”.
“This is the first time members from our area have joined Auckland Rotarians, and we’ll be keen to repeat it next year.”
The eradication of polio is one of Rotary’s longest-standing and most significant projects and is considered to be the largest public health initiative the world has seen.
Robinson said 18 million people are alive today, or have not been left paralysed by the disease, because of the polio eradication campaign started by Rotarians.
“It was in the mid-1980s that Rotarians set their sights on global polio eradiation and persuaded the world’s most powerful organisations in the field of health to join us. The result was the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, and with our partners, we have helped immunise children against polio in 122 countries,” he said. “We have reduced polio cases by 99.9 per cent worldwide, and we won’t stop until we end the disease for good.”
Only Afghanistan and Pakistan remain with positive cases.
Polio, or poliomyelitis, is an infection disease caused by the polio virus. It has existed for thousands of years, is highly infectious and occurs only in humans.
