PolioPlus Update - Feb 11, 2013

Great news for the start of the New Year: there were NO cases of polio ANYWHERE in the world for the month of January 2013!

One day soon, we will be able to say this about every month of every year.

We are making great progress - with only 222 cases of polio last year compared to 716 cases in 2011 and compared to around half a million children every year when we started.

That news changed on February 6 with the news that a 14 month old child from Karachi, Pakistan was reported as the first case of paralysis in 2013.

On February 8 there was more tragic news, that nine female vaccine workers had been killed in an attack in Nigeria.

This followed the earlier murder of nine polio vaccine workers in Pakistan over a three day period in December, with another 7 clinic workers were killed on New Years Day. The Pakistan attacks appear to be a retaliation by the Taliban to the capture and death of Osama Bin Laden through a fake vaccination program. The fake vaccination was not for polio and did not involve Rotary.

Boko Haram, the militant group claiming responsibility for the attacks in Pakistan, is a militant group that opposes Western medicine as well as the education of females. They killed hundreds in Nigeria last year, but this appears to be the first time that they have targeted vaccine workers.

The governments of Pakistan and Nigeria have pledged to continue the fight to eradicate polio. Health Minister Sagheer Ahmed said that Pakistan has resumed the campaign with greater urgency and have given polio vaccine teams special security so that they can carry on their work without fear.

At a gathering last September at the United Nations, world leaders agreed to provide long term funding for the fight to eliminate polio within 3 to 5 years.

Rotary’s PolioPlus Chair, Dr. Bob Scott noted that Rotary has an emergency fund for the families of the "fallen heroes" in the war against polio. When a Rotary volunteer met with the family of a 19 year old killed in the Pakistan attacks, her 16 year old sister asked how old she would need to be before she could be a vaccine worker as she wanted to finish her sister’s work.