Gwinnett Rotary Champions Vaccine Education for World Polio Day

On Monday, October 24, 2022, World Polio Day, global health experts, partners and Rotarians around the world stand together to celebrate the End Polio Now vaccine movement and share the progress made toward polio eradication.

Here at home, Gwinnett Rotarians have partnered with public and private healthcare partners to release an important educational video to share facts about polio, vaccine development, and the effectiveness of vaccines to prevent polio, as well as many other diseases in our community.

While there is no cure for polio, the disease is 100% preventable with proper vaccination. Since 1988, Rotary’s End Polio Now movement has immunized over 2.5 billion children worldwide, reducing polio cases by 99.9%. There are now only two countries still endemic, Afghanistan and Pakistan. While that might seem ‘good enough’, until polio is gone forever no child is safe. Unless we eradicate polio, within 10 years as many as 200,000 new cases could occur around the world each year.

Polio was once one of the most feared diseases in the U.S. In the early 1950s, before polio vaccines were available, polio outbreaks caused more than 15,000 cases of paralysis each year. Following introduction of vaccines—specifically, trivalent inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV) in 1955 and trivalent oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV) in 1963—the number of polio cases fell rapidly to less than 100 in the 1960s and fewer than 10 in the 1970s.

The United States has been free of the wild poliovirus since 1979, with the last episode of an unvaccinated traveler bringing polio into the country taking place in 1993. But in late July of this year a case of paralytic poliomyelitis, caused by vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2, was confirmed in an unvaccinated adult in Rockland County, New York where only 40% of children are vaccinated against polio. That one case of paralytic polio is officially considered an outbreak; hence, the United States has now joined a list of 30 countries with circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus.

Dr. Audrey Arona, Health Director for GNR Public Health and Gwinnett Rotarian explains, “It only takes one traveler with polio to bring the disease into the United States or one undervaccinated community to become a breeding ground. The best way to keep our community safe from polio is to commit to maintain high immunity against polio through vaccination.”

People most at risk for polio infection are:

• Those who have never had a polio vaccine
• Those who didn’t receive all recommended vaccine doses
• Those traveling to areas that could put them at risk for getting polio

Gwinnett Rotary Club President, Wanda Weegar says, “Disease prevention is a top concern for Rotary International and Rotary Club of Gwinnett members are committed to helping raise awareness here locally to keep our community as healthy as possible. We are excited to share this video on World Polio Day to help elevate the conversation about the importance of vaccinations.”

Paige Havens, Gwinnett Rotarian and program lead for the Gwinnett Coalition’s vaccine and health equity program shares, “This is a vitally important conversation. Our team of health equity navigators focuses every day dispelling myths and empowering our residents with facts about life-saving vaccines. Unfortunately, there is so much misinformation circulating. The political polarization of and disinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines set us back significantly. We must all work together and be intentional about building immunity for our community.”

Watch the video via YouTube here: https://youtu.be/3ssippekUbI