Suburban Rotary clubs raising funds for polio eradication

Rotary Club members in Mount Prospect, Des Plaines and Prospect Heights are taking action on World Polio Day, Saturday, Oct. 24, to raise awareness, funds and support to end polio, a vaccine-preventable disease that still threatens children in parts of the world today.

Members of the Rotary Club of River Cities are asking friends and members of the community to join them to end polio by making a donation at www.endpolio.org/donate. Thanks to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a contribution will be tripled.

Established by the Rotary International to commemorate the birth of Jonas Salk, the medical researcher who led the first team to develop a vaccine against polio, World Polio Day has been observed for more than a decade. When Rotary International and its partners launched the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in 1988, there were 350,000 cases of polio every year in 125 countries. Cases have been greatly reduced since, with just two countries now reporting wild poliovirus cases: Afghanistan and Pakistan.