Cleveland Rotarian Participates in Polio Immunization in India
Dear Rotarians and Friends of Rotary:
Rotarian Dave Diffendal participated in a Polio Immunization Day
on Sunday in India...this is a photo his wife Laura shared with us taken just after
he had administered two "life-saving drops" of Polio vaccine
helping to keep the children of India "Polio-free."
India was declared Polio-free last Monday - below are entries from
Rotary International's Facebook page about this momentous occasion.
END Polio NOW – A Polio Free India
(Excerpts from Rotary International’s Facebook page)
"India was a country where it was once thought polio could never be eradicated."
On Monday, January 13, 2014 India was declared POLIO FREE! In 1988, the forty-first World Health Assembly adopted a resolution for the worldwide eradication of polio. Here are some polio certification facts: Regions as a whole are certified as polio free. For certification, all countries in the Region need to not register a case of wild polio for 3 years in the presence of high quality surveillance. The formal process for certification of polio eradication was established in 1995 at the first meeting of the Global Certification Commission (GCC). There are National Certification Committees (NCCs) who focus on analysis at the country level. In SEARO, each of the 11 member states has a NCC. All Regions have a certification commission. For SEARO there is the South-East Asia Regional Certification Commission which comprises eleven global and regional experts. It is this commission that can certify the South-East Asia Region as polio free. Three Regions (Americas, 1994; Western Pacific, 2000; Europe, 2002) have already been certified as polio free.