Polio

Rotary District 7610

Rotary Foundation Committee

Click on photo to view announcement of the Gates Challenge Grant.

"I was in a slum in East Delhi, and I held a nine month old girl named Hashmin in my arms. My dad and my sisters were with me, and we talked to Hashmin’s mother in the courtyard outside her home. Hashmin was dressed in a beautiful bright orange dress. She obviously didn’t understand why people were poking her legs and looking so serious. But she’ll never be able to kick a ball around, never be able to play hide and seek with her friends, because she has polio.

"As I held Hashmin, I thought, We can end this."

Bill Gates, Founder of Microsoft

After 20 years of hard work, Rotary and its partners are on the brink of eradicating this tenacious disease, but a strong push is needed now to root it out once and for all. It is a window of opportunity of historic proportions.

Your contribution will help Rotary raise $200 million to match $355 million in challenge grants received from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The resulting $555 million will directly support immunization campaigns in developing countries, where polio continues to infect and paralyze children, robbing them of their futures and compounding the hardships faced by their families.

As long as polio threatens even one child anywhere in the world, children everywhere remain at risk. The stakes are that high.