Stillwater Sunrise Rotary Club - Stillwater, Minnesota

Through Foundation grants and programs, Rotarians and other contributors can help change the world. They can finance a well for a village that lacks clean water, improve the environment, or provide scholarships to educate the next generation. The grants and programs available to Rotarians allow them to realize Rotary’s humanitarian mission throughout the world, including its number-one goal of eradicating polio.

PolioPlus has been Rotary's flagship program. Rotary club members will contribute US$600 million and countless volunteer hours to help immunize over two million children against polio. Sprearheading partners in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative includes the World Health Organization, Rotary International, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UNICEF and most recently the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

To eradicate polio, Rotarians have mobilized by the hundreds of thousands. They’re working to ensure that children are immunized against this crippling disease and that surveillance is strong despite the poor infrastructure, extreme poverty, and civil strife of many countries. Since the PolioPlus program’s inception in 1985, more than two billion children have received the oral polio vaccine.

Decades ago, polio outbreaks were a constant threat around the world. After the introduction of polio vaccines by Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin and a steadfast immunization effort, these outbreaks became part of history in most of the world.

Yet many still live under the threat of polio, which is why Rotary and its global partners are committed to reaching every child with the vaccine and ending this disease worldwide.

Major gains have been made in the global fight against polio:

• In the 1980s, 1,000 children were infected by the disease every day in 125 countries. Today, polio cases have declined by 99 percent, with fewer than two thousand cases reported in 2006.
• Two billion children have been immunized, five million have been spared disability, and over 250,000 deaths from polio have been prevented.