Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan has joined a global initiative to eliminate polio from all countries, including his native Pakistan.
Khan will be featured in an ad that will run in November in “The Rotarian,” the publication of Rotary International that is sent to members of more than 34,000 clubs in 200 countries. The campaign for the “End Polio Now” program is built around the slogan “This Close.”
The Rotary Club of Jacksonville heard a progress report Monday on ending one of the most feared diseases of the 20th century.
John Germ, Rotary International president-designate for 2016-17 and chair of the Rotary International Polio Plus Committee, said the group joined the fight against polio in 1979. At that time, there were more than 300,000 cases diagnosed annually in 125 countries.
“Now we’re down to three endemic countries — Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria –– and we’re down to a little over 200 cases worldwide, so we’re making progress and we’re continuing our work to eradicate polio,” he said.
Fewer than 20 cases of polio have been diagnosed in the past year in Afghanistan and Nigeria. Pakistan, which has identified about 200 cases, is the last stronghold of the disease.
In addition to the country having many remote areas, terrorism is hindering the effort to eradicate polio.
The Taliban has imposed a ban on the vaccine, said Aziz Memon, national chair of the Pakistan Polio Plus Committee.
“They are savage creatures who live in the Stone Age. They have no love for humanity,” he said. “In 2012, we were almost done. In the first seven months of 2012, we did not have a single case.”
When it was realized the ban was not stopping children from being vaccinated, the terrorists killed 63 volunteers who were administering the vaccine.
“This created a lot of panic and our work slowed down, but we never stopped,” Memon said.
The international effort began decades ago with a $760,000 grant that was used to vaccinate 6 million children in the Philippines. In the past 35 years, Rotary has helped immunize more than 2.5 billion children.
Rotarians have donated more than $1.3 billion for the initiative, said Germ. They are joined in the final push to eliminate the disease by the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and UNICEF.
In addition, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation joined the team in 2007.
The foundation donated $100 million that November, with a challenge to raise another $100 million by December 2010.
“They asked us to spend theirs before we raised ours,” Germ said. “In all of the projects that we’re involved in, we like to know that there is a goal that can be accomplished within a specific time frame.”
Germ’s goal is to see polio eradicated by the time he takes over as president of Rotary International in July 2016. Three years later, if no more cases are diagnosed, the WHO will certify the world as polio-free.
“We think we can have Pakistan done in 2015,” he said. “I’d love to take office with no more polio and we will continue to provide the vaccine for the next three years. Our goal is by December 31, 2018 to have the total world polio-free.”
Rotary and its partners invite the public to participate in the program through donation and education. For details, visit endpolionow.org.
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