World Polio Day

World Polio Day: Health officials laud polio eradication achievements, point to disease’s endgame

Time magazine science and technology editor Jeffery Kluger (left) talks with James Alexander, senior medical epidemiologist for the CDC as part of World Polio Day Friday night.

Photo Credit: Alyce Henson

After a year of shrinking polio cases worldwide, the crippling disease is now on the cusp of being eradicated, said top health officials at Rotary's second annual World Polio Day event on 24 October.

At a special Livestream program -- World Polio Day: Make History Today -- Rotary leaders joined global health experts and celebrity singers to hail the progress of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. After nearly 30 years, the GPEI, which includes Rotary, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is on the brink of ending polio by 2018, making it the second infectious disease to be eradicated.

"A world without polio is within our grasp more than at any point in the past ... read more at rotary.org