(NAPSI)—Over the past 50 years alone, vaccines have saved 154 million lives. That’s six lives saved every minute over 50 years. However, outbreaks of measles, polio, and cholera are on the rise despite being vaccine-preventable, and vaccines still require urgent funding. Measles is one of the most contagious diseases and is often the first indicator of lack of vaccination.
About vaccines
Vaccines are one of the safest and most effective ways to protect people from certain life-threatening diseases.
Unfortunately, COVID-19 has disrupted life-saving vaccination campaigns, and vaccine-preventable diseases such as polio and measles are now resurging around the world, including 13 cases in the United States. This includes an outbreak of measles cases.
Polio guidelines
Consider the ancient scourge of polio. Efforts to eradicate it have been going on for decades. At its peak in the 1940s and 1950s, it affected 13,000 to 20,000 people each year in the United States, many of them children. Thousands died and many others were left permanently paralyzed. Subsequently, vaccines were developed and deployed by Jonas Salk in 1955 and by Albert Sabin in 1961, and the number of infected people decreased.
Over the next several years, Rotary International (https://endpolio.org), an international humanitarian organization with more than 1.2 members worldwide, launched a global fight to eradicate polio. Since founding the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in 1988, Rotary and its partners have reduced polio cases around the world by more than 99.9 percent. Partners include the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UNICEF, the Gates Foundation, and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.
Rotary International and its members have donated $2.7 billion and countless volunteer hours to immunize 3 billion children in 122 countries and eliminate polio. As a result, only seven cases of wild poliovirus were detected in 2023 (two in Pakistan and five in Afghanistan). For the past 30 years, the World Health Organization’s Region of the Americas has declared polio eradicated.
Rotary members are business, professional, and community leaders who share a commitment to making the world a better place. Rotary and its partners are also using a new vaccine, nOPV2, to address the mutated poliovirus outbreak. Millions of doses have been administered. Rotary has been advocating for, distributing, and administering vaccines for 45 years.
Learn more about measles
Measles once seemed like a success story. Coverage of the safe and effective measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine in the United States was so high that it was declared eradicated in the United States in 2000.
However, recent data show that MMR prevalence among U.S. kindergarteners is below the CDC’s goal of 95%, even lower in some regions, and on the decline.
The CDC reports that measles is highly contagious, and if one person gets measles, they can infect nine out of 10 people nearby who are not vaccinated. Masu. Common complications are ear infections and diarrhea. Serious complications include pneumonia and encephalitis.
Meanwhile, measles activity is increasing worldwide, meaning unvaccinated people who contract measles abroad are increasingly likely to return to the United States. This is one reason why it’s wise to talk to your health care provider about the MMR vaccine, especially if you plan to travel.
About cervical cancer
Rotary is also working to prevent this deadly disease. Women diagnosed with cervical cancer are almost twice as likely to die from cervical cancer than from breast cancer. Fortunately, cervical cancer is both preventable and treatable.
Human papillomavirus, also known as HPV, causes more than 90% of cervical cancers and can remain in the body for long periods of time and eventually cause cancer. Getting vaccinated against HPV can prevent most cervical cancers and many other cancers because it gives your body a safe way to make your immune system aware of specific HPV strains. Masu.
To support this, The Rotary Foundation has provided more than $10.3 million in global grants to cervical cancer projects since 2014, and other Rotary projects have contributed more than $10.3 million in global grants to cervical cancer projects since 2014. I’ve been working on the problem.
what you can do
You can join the fight to eradicate polio in four ways:
1. Donate to the End Polio Now campaign (https://endpolio.org).
2. Contact government leaders and encourage them to prioritize financial and political support for polio eradication and vaccination for other diseases.
3. Join World Polio Day on October 24 each year to raise awareness of the importance of polio vaccination and celebrate the parents, professionals and volunteers who make polio eradication possible.
4. Join Rotary. Since 1985, Rotary members have helped immunize up to 400 million children against polio each year. As a result, more than 20 million people who would have been paralyzed are now able to walk, and more than 1.5 million people who would have died are now alive.
learn more
For more information, please visit www.polioeradication.org and www.endpolio.org.
