World Polio Day was established by Rotary International over a decade ago to commemorate the birth of Jonas Salk, who led the first team to develop a vaccine against poliomyelitis. Use of this inactivated poliovirus vaccine and subsequent widespread use of the oral poliovirus, developed by Albert Sabin, led to the establishment of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) in 1988.

In 1988, when Rotary and its partners founded the GPEI, the paralyzing disease affected 350,000 children. Our collaboration with the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and later the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, local health workers, and national governments has helped reduce the number to just 18 cases of wild poliovirus this year. The annual number of polio cases has fallen from 350,000 in 1988 to 416 in 2013, and 222 so far this year, a remarkable decrease of more than 99 percent. UNICEF estimates that 10 million people would have otherwise been infected, while 1.5 million lives have been saved.

Rotary has contributed more than $1.2 billion to polio eradication since taking on the disease in 1979. That amount got a significant boost after Rotary announced it will provide an additional $44.7 million toward the polio fight.

Polio is a crippling and potentially fatal infectious disease. There is no cure, but there are safe and effective vaccines. Polio can be prevented through immunization. Polio vaccine, given multiple times, almost always protects a child for life. The strategy to eradicate polio is therefore based on preventing infection by immunizing every child until transmission stops and the world is polio-free.