Polio plus

waikato sunrise rotary supports

polio plus

Each year, Waikato Sunrise Rotary donates funds to the PolioPlus campaign to support Rotary's worldwide mission to eradicate polio.

Rotary has been working to eradicate polio for more than 35 years. Our goal of ridding the world of this disease is closer than ever.

As a founding partner of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, we’ve reduced polio cases by 99.9 percent since our first project to vaccinate children in the Philippines in 1979.

Rotary members have contributed more than $2.1 billion and countless volunteer hours to protect nearly 3 billion children in 122 countries from this paralyzing disease. Rotary’s advocacy efforts have played a role in decisions by governments to contribute more than $10 billion to the effort.

Today, polio remains endemic only in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But it’s crucial to continue working to keep other countries polio-free. If all eradication efforts stopped today, within 10 years, polio could paralyze as many as 200,000 children each year.

polio eradication...

we won't stop

Today, eighteen million people around the world who would have died or been paralyzed are alive and walking because of the polio eradication campaign.

It was back in the mid-1980’s that Rotarians set their sights on global polio eradication and persuaded the world’s most powerful organisations in the field of heath to join us. The result was the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, and, with our partners, we have helped immunise more than 2.5 billion children against polio in 122 countries.

We have reduced polio cases by 99.9% worldwide and we won’t stop until we end the disease for good.