Lake Tahoe livestream concert dedicated to Rotary's End Polio Now campaign

Rotary International's World Polio Day is being celebrated around the world this weekend, a time set aside for global health experts and partners to share the service club's progress on the road to polio eradication.

It has been over 60 years since the Jonas Salk polio vaccine was declared safe, effective, and potent. In that time, the number of polio cases has dropped by 99 percent worldwide. With just three countries remaining polio-endemic, eradicating this crippling disease is almost complete. There is no cure, and only the vaccine to prevent it.

Before the vaccine was widely available, in the United States alone, polio crippled more than 35,000 people each year. The impact on the rest of the world has taken longer.

In 1988, when Rotary International launched the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) with its partners at the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, polio continued to cripple children in 125 countries. Today, polio remains endemic in only three: Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan. And it has been more than eight months since Nigeria’s last case, making a polio-free Africa a real possibility.

Of the $1.9 billion Rotary has raised and funded since the mid-1980s to end Polio, $885 million has come from the Gates Foundation in the form of matching grants. Under this agreement, Rotary is committed to raising $50 million a year over the next three years, and each dollar will be matched with an additional two dollars by the Gates Foundation.

In Lake Tahoe, Rotary clubs around the lake will be celebrating their accomplishments on removing the disease from the world with a livestream concert by Luke Stevenson on Sunday, October 25 from 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. It will be on his Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/lukestevensonsings/.

There will be an opportunity to donate, listen to stories as well as music. A five-dose vial of the vaccine costs $3.10. In a 2020 report, the World Health Organization said even though polio cases have decreased by over 99 percent, failure to eradicate polio could result in as many as 200 000 new cases every year, within 10 years, all over the world.