Rotarians help beat back polio outbreak in India




Confident that India would soon eradicate polio, Past District 6900 Governor Robert Hall led several U.S. Rotarians to Subnational Immunization Days in Uttar Pradesh in November. The poverty stricken state in northern India was the epicenter of a 2006 polio outbreak.

Rotary Foundation Major Donors Jim and Donna Philips, whose contribution to the PolioPlus Partners program helped fund the SNIDs, also traveled with the group. The team was encouraged by the collaboration among government officials, religious leaders, Indian Rotarians, UNICEF, and the World Health Organization.

"This trip was the experience of a lifetime for all 20 Rotarians who visited Uttar Pradesh," says Hall, who pledged the continued support of District 6900 (Georgia, USA) and Zone 34 Rotarians.

Hall's optimism on polio is shared by India's health minister, Anbumani Ramadoss. The minister told journalists at a mid-December press conference that despite the outbreak, he is confident that India will end polio with stepped-up immunizations.

"In three years, we will do away with polio," he said. "We are at the end of the problem and will hit the final nail in the coffin."

Julie Gerberding, head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at the same event that the outbreak "is a warning that we can't be complacent." She also noted that the last few cases of polio are often the most difficult to deal with.

India is countering the challenges of polio eradication through intensified immunizations with the monovalent oral polio vaccine. Because most of the reported cases in 2006 were from poor Muslim communities, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative is working with religious leaders to persuade more families to have their children immunized. Partly because of the Muslim clerics' support, India reported an overall increase in turnout of children during SNIDs in July, September, and November.

Rotarians help tornado victims rebuild


Rotary District 5690, which covers Kansas and parts of Oklahoma, USA, and the local Rotary club are helping the victims of a 4 May tornado that killed nine people and damaged rural towns.

The tornado demolished the town of Greensburg, Kansas. Nearby towns also suffered damage. It's estimated that more than 1,700 people were affected by this disaster, which caused numerous injuries, and destroyed homes, schools, and the local hospital.

Local Rotarians already have been busy helping the community. They made the local high school graduation possible by organizing the event, providing security, and hosting the reception.

District 5690 is collecting funds to help the people of Greensburg and the surrounding communities. It hopes to provide help with immediate needs, including temporary housing, equipment for cleaning up, donations of books and clothing, as well as long-term recovery.

Rotary International News

http://www.rotary.org/newsroom/programs/070522_kansas.html

German and Swiss Rotarians help land mine victims


They are buried in fields, roads, and footpaths. In more than 70 countries, land mines - remnants of forgotten conflicts - have become slow-motion weapons of mass destruction.

According to the United Nations, between 15,000 to 20,000 people are maimed or killed by mines every year. More than a fifth of the victims are children. Afghanistan, Cambodia, Angola, and Iraq are the most affected countries. In Afghanistan alone, an estimated 10 million mines and other ordnance are hidden in the ground.

Convinced that it required more than words to fight the problem of land mines, Rotarians from Switzerland and Germany started MINE-EX, a project to help victims of mines and to work for a worldwide ban of the terrible weapons. (Learn more at www.mine-ex.ch and www.mine-ex-rotary.de).

MINE-EX is based on the initiative of Swiss Rotarian Hans Stirnemann, who worked as a surgeon for the International Red Cross in Asia and Africa in the 1990s. Devastated by the suffering he saw caused by the equally cheap and devilish devices, he took action. "I can still see these people, their torn-off limbs and tormented bodies, silently and desperately looking to me, the doctor, for help. And there was not much I could do," remembers Stirnemann. "That's when I learned to hate these weapons."

"Anti-personnel mines are not designed to kill people, but to seriously injure and to permanently disable," says Gerhard Selmayr, MINE-EX chair.

The organization pursues four goals:
1. Medical and orthopedic care of mine victims (production and fitting of implants, artificial limbs, and so forth)
2. Training of local prosthesis technicians
3. Support of activities for a worldwide ban of the production and distribution of anti-personnel mines
4. Support for the removal of land mines

Since 1997, MINE-EX has worked closely with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to equip thousands of injured people with artificial limbs and to train local technicians - many of them amputees themselves. While the Swiss Rotarians concentrate their work in Cambodia, German Rotarians provide help in Georgia and Central Asia.

"Wissen gegen Minen" (Science against Mines) is another association fighting against land mines. This group, also supported by Rotarians, concentrates on knowledge transfer, which they do by using the Internet to teach mine removal methods. One focus of the organization is to provide information in regional languages. In cooperation with the Institute of Technology in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, for instance, the information is distributed in the country's main language, Khmer.

Despite extensive mine removal programs, says Selmayr, it will take decades to clean up the soil in war and post-war regions, a tedious - and dangerous - task carried out with metal detectors, search dogs, and removal devices. There is a lot of work waiting for MINE-EX.

By Sandra Prufer

http://www.rotary.org/newsroom/programs/070503_mine.html