About PolioPlus

Rotary's war on polio began in 1979 with a commitment to buy and help deliver vaccine to six million children in the Philippines.  It was the first project conceived under Rotary's new Health, Hunger and Humanity (3-H program and a test of Rotarians' capacity to serve effectively, on a massive scale, in the field of public health.  It success spurred the planning of the most ambitious program in Rotary's 75 year history: the immunization of all the world's children against polio.

Campaigns were undertaken in other countries in the next five years.  By 1985, with the advice and support of Dr. Albert Sabin, developer of the oral polio vaccine, Rotary had forged a global strategy: establish partnerships with health agencies and national health ministries, raise money to buy vaccine, and enlist the one million Rotary club members as foot soldiers in the task of delivering the vaccine to the more than 100 million children born each year in developing countries.  The name of the program, Polio Plus, embraced both the quest for a polio-free world and the belief that an attack targeting polio would also help to raise immunization levels against five other childhood infectious diseases that were killing and disabling millions of children each year. In 1988, the World Health Assembly challenged the world to eradicate polio. Since that time, Rotary's efforts and those of partner agencies, including the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children's Fund, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and governments around the world, have achieved a 99 percent reduction in the number of polio cases worldwide.

The Janesville Rotary Club has participated in the 1985 fund drive, and again in the recent 2003 to 2006 fund drive.