Europe will retain its status as a polio-free region after Member States
took satisfactory steps to combat an imported outbreak of the
debilitating and sometimes fatal disease last year, in what the United
Nations health agency hailed as “tremendous news.”
The 53-nation region, which for the purposes of the UN World Health Organization (WHO)
includes ex-Soviet nations in Central Asia, with a combined population
of some 900 million people, was officially certified as polio-free in
2002 after there had been no indigenous cases for more than three years.
But last year the infection was imported by a traveller or travellers
from northern India into Tajikistan, from where it spread to some 475
patients, killing 30 of them, in Kazakhstan, Russia, Tajikistan and
Turkmenistan.
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And yes - Rotary is mentioned:
Since the launch in 1988 of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), spearheaded by WHO, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF),
Rotary International and the United States Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention, the incidence of polio has been reduced by more than 99
per cent.
Are we, as Rotarians, active enough in profiling this wonderful news?
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