The hard part is the logistics - getting into the sometimes war-torn countries to do the work, rounding up all of the children and making sure you don't miss a single one, getting the vaccine there, keeping it cold along the way . . .
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"Getting into those counties is the complication," said Schuck.
But RI is up to the challenge, and after a $255 million donation from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation last month, the organization has the funding needed to make it happen.
"We are going to end polio now," affirmed Robert S. Scott, chair of RI's international PolioPlus committee, in a Rotary International press release from Jan. 21.
The Gates Foundation had previously pledged a $100 million grant to the cause in November 2007, bringing its total pledge to $355 million. Rotary International has pledged to raise $200 million by June 30, 2012.
Rotary believes that $555 million is what's needed to eradicate polio from those final four countries and the world.
"Rotary will spend the grant in direct support of immunization actitivies carried out by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, which is spearheaded by RI and its partners, the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and UNICEF," Rotary International News reported.
Rotary International is looking to its clubs and individual Rotarians to raise its $200 million. Already RI has raised nearly $73 million toward the goal.
Each club is being challenged to organize public fundraisers annually for the next three years, according to RI News.
What Is Polio?
Polio is a crippling and potentially fatal infectious disease that enters the environment in the feces of someone who's infected, according to the Mayo Clinic Web site. The virus is spread primarily through the fecal-oral route, especially in areas where sanitation is inadequate.
"Poliovirus can be transmitted through contaminated water and food - there's some evidence that flies may spread the virus to food - or through direct contact with someone infected with the virus or who has recently received an oral polio vaccine (OPV), which contains live virus," the Web site reads.
"Polio is so contagious that anyone living with a recently infected person is likely to become infected too. Although people carrying the poliovirus are most contagious seven to 10 days before and after signs and symptoms appear, they can spread the virus for weeks in their feces.
"Once poliovirus invades your body, it multiplies in your throat and intestinal tract and then travels to your central nervous system through your blood and lymphatic system. As it moves along your nerve fibers, poliovirus damages or destroys the motor neurons that carry messages between your brain and your muscles."
In the most severe cases, polio attacks the motor neurons of the brain stem, causing breathing difficulty. Polio can cause paralysis within hours and sometimes death.Ê
There is no cure for polio, so the best protection is prevention. For as little as 60 cents worth of vaccine, a child can be protected against this crippling disease for life, according to the Rotary International Web site.ÊÊÊ
Traced to 1580 B.C.
Polio is a word and a condition most Americans associate with history. It has not been a major issue in the United States since the 1960s, said Schuck, when the oral vaccine was introduced.
The last indigenous case of polio in the Americas was in 1991, he noted. The history of polio has been traced as far back as 1580 B.C., said Debbie Door, Washington Rotary Club past president, sharing information found on RI's Web site (www.rotary.org). An Egyptian stele depicting a priest with a withered leg leaning on a staff, suggests the disease has existed for thousands of years.
In 1789, British physician Michael Underwood attempts the first-known clinical description of polio, titled "Debility of the Lower Extremities."
By 1916, a polio epidemic in New York heightened concern of polio and accelerated research into how the disease is spread.
In 1931, Sir Macfarlane Burnet and Dame Jean MacNamara identified several types of poliovirus, known as types 1, 2 and 3.
Dr. Jonas Salk developed the first vaccine against polio, an injectable inactivated (killed) polio vaccine (IPV), in 1954. That was followed by an oral vaccine against polio (OPV) developed by Dr. Albert Sabin in 1961, which became the vaccine of choice for most national immunization programs in the world.
Rotary International made polio eradication a top priority in 1985 led by the efforts of a Rotary Club in the Philippines, said Door. PolioPlus was the first and largest internationally coordinated private-sector support of a public health initiative, with an initial pledge of $120 million.
Back then, RI set 2005 as its target date to have polio eradicated from the globe. It missed that deadline, but not without making huge strides toward that goal.
In 1988, polio was found in most countries in the world. Rotarians raised $247 million for PolioPlus, more than double the fundraising goal of $120 million.
Inspired in part by Rotary's initiative, the World Health Assembly passed a resolution to eradicate polio, paving the way for the formation of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.
By 1994, the Western Hemisphere was declared "polio free." But the work was far from over.
In 1995 Rotarians and other volunteers immunized 165 million children in China and India in a single week. In 1997, another 134 million children were immunized on a single day in India.
A record 550 million children - almost one-tenth of the world's population - received the oral polio vaccine (OPV) in 2000. By 2003, only seven countries remained polio-endemic.
In 2004 in Africa, synchronized National Immunization Days in 23 countries targeted 80 million children, the largest coordinated polio immunization effort on the continent.
The number of polio-endemic countries dropped to four (Afghanistan, India, Nigeria, Pakistan), the lowest in human history, in 2006.
To date, Rotary's overall contribution to eradicate polio totals nearly $800 million.
It is believed the $555 million pledged by the Gates Foundation and Rotary International will be enough to complete the polio vaccinations in those final four countries, said Schuck.
Historically, polio has been the world's greatest cause of disability, Rotary International notes on its Web site. If the disease isn't eradicated, the world will continue to live under the threat of polio.
More than 10 million children will be paralyzed in the next 40 years if the world fails to capitalize on its $5 billion global investment in eradication, RI claims.
Critical to Get Every One
In February 2002, Schuck traveled to India to participate in the National Immunization Day. Schuck had to pay his own way to India, but was able to stay with a host family.
After a brief training session, Schuck and other Rotarians served as volunteers administering the vaccine to children. The tricky part was making sure every child in the village, town or area was vaccinated.
That's critical, because if even one child is missed, it leaves the whole world exposed to a future outbreak, said Schuck.
"It's like a big grass field that's on fire," he explained. "If you try to put out the fire, but you miss one small ember, the fire will get out again and spread. "If we miss someone from one of these four countries left to immunize, and that person goes to another country, that person can transport polio."
Schuck doesn't want that to happen. During his time in India, he saw firsthand how polio affects people's lives.
"The people with polio are called scooters, because that's how they get around,"Ê he said. "They have to scoot on the ground everywhere."
At a special eye camp Rotary was holding where Schuck also volunteered, a blind woman who also had polio came in to see if she qualified for the surgery that could restore her eyesight. Schuck knew she qualified after talking with her while she waited in line, but later he noticed her leaving.
When he questioned one of the local people determining who would get the surgery and who wouldn't about why the blind "scooter" had been turned away, the person told him, "She has so many other issues, it's not really worth doing the surgery on her."
Schuck disagreed. "I said, 'That's exactly why we are going to do this surgery for her!'
"She'd had polio as a child, lived her life as a scooter . . . this was something we could do to make her life a little better."
In Mumbai, India, Schuck witnessed a worse horror - people with polio who were confined to "iron lungs," steel chambers that they laid in and mimicked the physiological act of breathing.
"We're so lucky here to have polio eradicated in the United States," said Door. "We get our babies immunized and don't think anything about it."
Now with only four countries left to immunize, the goal of eradicating polio is within reach, she remarked.
To make a donation to the Rotary International PolioPlus Program, people can contact their local Rotary Club.
