Come as a guest
The short answer
In 1985 Rotary launched PolioPlus, the first program to try immunizing every child in the world against a single disease. Three years later it co-founded the Global Polio Eradication Initiative with the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the CDC. Since 1988 polio cases have fallen by 99.9 percent, from an estimated 350,000 a year in 125 countries to a few dozen cases in two. Rotary has contributed more than $2.7 billion, and the Gates Foundation matches new gifts two to one.
Key takeaways
- Polio paralyzed about 350,000 children a year in 1988. Wild poliovirus is now endemic only in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
- Rotary's PolioPlus began in 1985 and has helped immunize more than three billion children.
- Every dollar you give to PolioPlus is matched two to one by the Gates Foundation.
- October 24 is World Polio Day. We mark it every year.
- Until polio is gone everywhere, it is a plane ride from anywhere.
The pledge
Rotary had run a small polio immunization project in the Philippines in 1979. By 1985 the organization committed to the whole world, and in 1988 the World Health Assembly adopted the goal of global eradication. Rotarians raised money, lobbied governments and volunteered at National Immunization Days, handing out drops of oral vaccine to children in lines that stretched around villages.
Why it is taking so long
Eradication means zero, and the last cases live in the hardest places: conflict zones, areas with vaccine distrust, communities that move across borders. Surveillance has to catch every case, including the silent ones found only by sampling sewage. The GPEI spends roughly a billion dollars a year keeping the rest of the world polio-free while the last cases are chased down.
Easier than reading about it: come to a meeting. Come as a guest
Come as a guestWhat a Broward club does about it
Money, mostly, and attention. Rotary Club of Broward marks World Polio Day every October 24 with a push for PolioPlus donations through The Rotary Foundation, where the Gates Foundation match turns a $100 gift into $300. Members who give $1,000 to the Foundation become Paul Harris Fellows, and the club presented its first one in October 2026. Beyond that, we tell the story, because most people alive today have never met a polio survivor and do not know the job is almost finished.
Sources
- End Polio Now www.endpolio.org
- Global Polio Eradication Initiative polioeradication.org
- World Health Organization: Poliomyelitis www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/poliomyelitis
- Rotary International: Our causes www.rotary.org/en/our-causes