The Washington Rotary Club met Thursday evening at the Washington Yacht and Country Club.  President Brad Davis welcomed club members and opened the meeting by leading the singing of America and offering a prayer of thanks for the up coming meal.

Past District Governor Rocky Jacobs, End Polio Now Zone Coordinator for the Rotary districts in Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, a portion of Tennessee, South Carolina and the District of Columbia gave an update to the club on Rotary’s three-decade partnership with the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UNICEF, many Nation States in the world and most recently the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to rid the world of the incurable wild polio virus. Jacobs explained that although the United States has been relatively free of polio, except for isolated cases, for almost two decades, just ten years ago 50 percent of the children of the world still lived in an area of the world that was endemic to the polio virus.

Today that number has been reduced to 20 percent with only three active endemic countries. And, of those three endemic countries … Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria … 80 percent of the world’s cases are originating in Pakistan or can be traced back to Pakistan. Recent polio outbreaks in Syria and Iraq have been halted with over 22 million children being vaccinated against polio multiple times in the past year, in the midst of an active conflict and a humanitarian crisis. A synchronized regional mass polio vaccination campaign in central and West Africa is currently underway with volunteers from Rotary clubs around the world and health workers in the various countries to vaccinate nearly 94 million children in 18 countries. Jacobs further explained to the group that these types of activities and others like them are all part of a five year plan called the “Endgame Strategy and Strategic Plan” that has been promulgated by Rotary, the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to hopefully complete the goal of eradicating the incurable wild polio virus by 2018.

The meeting concluded with the Rotarians reciting the Four Way Test of the things we think, say and do.