100 year celebration of Rotary

Posted by Pieter Stam 
 
Here is another picture of our Rotary party, check out the home page for more.

The centennial was held wednesday evening at the Southgate Centre,
With many Rotarians, former Rotarians and Rotarian friends present from the Ingersoll, Tillsonburg, Tavistock, Woodstock and Woodstock Oxford Clubs
The Speaker of the evening was Debra Vanbrenk from the London FreePress, who recounted the history of Rotary involving Polio Plus.
Debra did a magnificent job, she spend counless hours researching Polio Plus.

Here are some highlights of her presentation.
 

 

2005 -Making Polio History

Half a century ago⿦
558,000 known new cases of polio in 1952 alone.

In South America, Asia, Africa, where no one was counting, who knows what the numbers were⿦.?
Today⿦
North America, South America, Central America -- polio- free since 1994
Western Pacific -- polio-free since 1997
Europe -- population 873 million people -- polio-free since 2002
Today⿦
Africa and Asia
-- 1,250 new cases in 2004 --

-- Last case
in the world
expected late 2005 --

Symptoms of polio⿦
Aching all over
Headache
Vomiting
Fever
Weakness
Jean (Balkwill) Brown
August, 1949: 25 years old, mother of toddler son, eight months pregnant.
Then, polio strikes⿦
Iron Lung Baby
"She chose my name and she chose the spelling of it. She knew she was going to die."
Kathryn Jean Roedding


1955 -- Salk vaccine

 

1985
400,000-plus polio cases worldwide, most of them in Africa and Asia⿦
1985⿦
Rotary International initiated the Polio Plus program
Polio Partners
Rotary International
UNICEF
World Health Organization
Centers for Disease Control

ROTARY CONTRIBUTIONS
= $180 MILLION ⿦


ROTARY CONTRIBUTIONS
  More than 100,000 Rotary volunteers
during National Immunization Days⿦

ROTARY CONTRIBUTIONS
Representing 20,000 clubs
⿦ from 158 countries
2 BILLION DOSES

Rosemary George, a Rotarian from Woodstock,
"It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience⿦
a life-changing experience."

RI director John Eberhard
"Had we not been involved in this campaign in the last 20 years, there would be two million children who would be either paralyzed or dead."

We thank Debra for a excellent presentation, it must have been very emotional to do all the research.
Debra brought us up to date on the facts of Polio.