In recognition of the worldwide efforts to eradicate polio, and to help raise the public profile of the on-going End Polio Now campaign, October 24 has been designated internationally as World Polio Day.  In Ottawa, the Rotary Clubs of Ottawa-Gatineau, together with the Ottawa Rotaract Clubs, are celebrating World Polio Day on Parliament Hill (by the Centennial flame) on October 20 from 11am to 3pm to highlight the international fight against polio, Rotary's leadership in this campaign, and the involvement of Rotary Ottawa-Gatineau in this effort. 
 
Please join us on this very special occasion and show your Rotary pride!!
 
Rotary's long-standing End Polio program, which has been working in partnership with the World Health Organisation (WHO), United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the U.S. Centres for Disease Control (CDC), to eradicate polio throughout the world.  The results have been amazing - over 2.5 billion children have been vaccinated against polio, with an international investment of US$14 billion, and the involvement of 20 million volunteers in 200 countries, resulting in a worldwide decline in polio cases of over 99% since 1988.  Now, in 2018, only 19 cases of wild polio virus have been found in two countries (Afghanistan and Pakistan), and 61 cases of circulating vaccine-derived polio virus cases in only 5 countries - this compares to 1000 children paralysed worldwide every day by polio in 1988  (see http://polioeradication.org/polio-today/history-of-polio/  for more information)!  In our lifetime, polio has almost been removed from the face of the Earth - only the second time this will have happened (smallpox is the other disease that we have eradicated).