Rotary Activities: Global Polio Eradication Initiative

Showing posts with label Global Polio Eradication Initiative. Show all posts

Thursday, May 15, 2025

Polio mapping goes high tech

Geotracking ensures fewer children are left behind

By Tolu Olasoji

Sandrine Lina (left) and other vaccinators hit the streets with cellphones that tracked their progress during an outbreak response campaign in the Republic of Congo.

Image credit: Marta Villa Monge/WHO Africa Office

When polio vaccinators fanned out across areas of the Republic of Congo last year to stop an outbreak, they carried a powerful new tool in their pockets: cellphones that tracked their progress as they went door to door. Equipped with a mobile app, the phones sent data back to a command center where staff could see on a digital map if homes were missed and redirect teams on the ground.

With support from the World Health Organization and other partners in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, the country is helping pioneer the use of what is known as geospatial tracking to stop polio outbreaks. Instead of relying on hand-drawn maps that are prone to errors, response team leaders can see with pinpoint accuracy where vaccinators have been and which homes they didn’t get to. This happens in real time when a wireless connection is available. Such speed and precision are crucial to ensuring that a vaccine reaches each child and outbreaks are stopped.

“All you have to do is charge your phone and make sure you turn on the tracker when you are out on the streets. I just put it in my pocket and go from house to house,” says Sandrine Lina, one of the WHO-trained vaccinators.

She and others hit the streets in June 2023 with hundreds of the phones after an outbreak of variant poliovirus type 1. The WHO African region was certified free of wild poliovirus in 2020. But this other form of polio, known as vaccine-derived or variant poliovirus, remains a threat. These cases occur in rare instances when the live but weakened virus in oral vaccines circulates long enough through sewage in communities with low vaccination rates to mutate into a potentially dangerous form.

The key to stopping such outbreaks is a thorough vaccination campaign. Geospatial tracking is playing a crucial role, generating intelligent maps and models. “The platform provides an opportunity for us to identify settlements that have poor coverage, where we’ve not seen many tracks of vaccination teams, and we can download the information to guide processes,” says Kebba Touray, the lead of WHO’s Geographic Information Systems Centre for the African region.

An early generation of the technology was used in Nigeria beginning in 2012, helping lead to the region’s certification as free of wild poliovirus eight years later. “That’s what gave birth to this innovative idea of ensuring settlements are mapped,” Touray says. It’s also been used in Cameroon.

For the June vaccination campaign, led by the Republic of Congo’s Health Ministry, about 500 smartphones were distributed each morning to vaccinators. Like a fitness tracker, the mobile app counts steps and plots the coordinates on a map, along with essential details such as dates and times. Vaccinators also can use the phones to collect field data such as settlement names, household information, and reasons given by those refusing a vaccine.

That information feeds a database that operations center managers can supervise in real time. It’s displayed on an online dashboard through a heat map that shades areas in green and red hues. “Green indicates that vaccinators have passed in these areas, and red areas indicate that, Oh, these areas were planned, but no team passed through,” explains Derrick Demeveng, a data and geographic information systems analyst who worked with the vaccination response team.

At the end of the first day, the operations center team in the capital, Brazzaville, saw that a section of the city’s Poto-Poto district had not been covered. Vaccinators were sent there first thing in the morning to find any children who had been missed.

That ability to review data and make quick course corrections is critical. In the past, planners had to rely on maps drawn by vaccinators to prepare what are known as microplans. Inaccuracies were inevitable, and information often wasn’t verified until after the campaign had ended. “The microplan is the critical component in preparing for outbreak response campaigns. You have to know where all the settlements are,” Touray says.

Disease mapping in response to public health emergencies has a long history. In 1854, English physician John Snow pioneered one of the earliest uses of mapping in modern epidemiology during a cholera outbreak in London. In search of a pattern, Snow mapped cases and — because he believed contaminated water was to blame — the locations of water pumps, and he found a connection. He was able to identify a single pump as the likely primary source, and when it was closed the outbreak ended.

Today, with a lot of computing power behind it, geospatial analytics is used in everything from weather modeling and sales trend forecasting to national defense, disaster response, and agriculture. The WHO is using geospatial technology to counter public health threats across the globe, from saving people in India from snake bite deaths to COVID-19 vaccine delivery in over 90 countries to polio eradication.

Geospatial technology is important for reaching members of communities who are often overlooked, says Rufaro Samanga, an epidemiologist who works at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, another GPEI partner. “Immunizations would be better served, especially in low- to middle-income countries, where you’re already dealing with limited resources in some settings. Real-time data from these tracking systems allows us to identify parts of the population that are often missed,” Samanga says.

Like a fitness tracker, the mobile app counts steps and feeds coordinates to a map, viewed at a command center (below) where staff members can see if homes were missed.

Image credit: Marta Villa Monge/WHO Africa Office

The newest version of the technology, used in the Republic of Congo, has many improvements. “This one is lightweight, it’s easy to deploy,” Touray explains. “And you are able to collect field information, especially concerning settlements, and to ensure that whatever information you are able to collect during an outbreak response campaign, you go back and use it to update your microplan” for future campaigns.

Demeveng says the technology solves the challenge of on-field visibility and incorporates a system of accountability, with supervisors able to monitor, direct, and advise vaccinators in the field. When they return to the emergency operations center, an analysis of the day’s outing is carried out.

While the Republic of Congo project was deemed successful, it did brush up against a familiar challenge: the digital divide. Despite advancements in digital inclusion, 2.6 billion people around the world remain unconnected to the internet, a considerable share of them in Africa, according to one recent analysis.

And a lack of strong internet infrastructure often disrupted the real-time upload feature of the geospatial tracking app. But the technology and the data collection are filling in the picture of polio and other public health challenges.

Touray and his WHO African team plan to implement these tracking systems elsewhere on the continent, including for purposes beyond polio. With the introduction of new technologies, though, one thing hasn’t changed: All vaccinated children are still marked on a finger with ink they can proudly display.

This story originally appeared in the March 2024 issue of Rotary magazine.

Visit :-

https://www.rotary.org/en/polio-mapping-goes-high-tech

Tuesday, May 13, 2025

Polio mapping goes high tech

Sandrine Lina (left) and other vaccinators hit the streets with cellphones that tracked their progress during an outbreak response campaign in the Republic of Congo.

Image credit: Marta Villa Monge/WHO Africa Office

Geotracking ensures fewer children are left behind

By Tolu Olasoji

Like a fitness tracker, the mobile app counts steps and feeds coordinates to a map, viewed at a command center (below) where staff members can see if homes were missed.

Image credit: Marta Villa Monge/WHO Africa Office

This story originally appeared in the March 2024 issue of Rotary magazine.

Visit :-

https://www.rotary.org/en/polio-mapping-goes-high-tech

Thursday, April 24, 2025

The polio shot heard round the world

A son recalls his father’s great medical achievement

By Dr. Peter L. Salk

Illustrations by Cristian Barba Camarena

I have been president of the Jonas Salk Legacy Foundation since its founding in 2009. As you can imagine, focusing my attention in that role on the legacy of my father’s many contributions to humanity — including his creation of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, just up the road in La Jolla on a bluff overlooking California’s magnificent Pacific Coast — has a special significance for me.

My father, Dr. Jonas Salk, developer of the first polio vaccine, was born in New York City on 28 October 1914, exactly three months after the beginning of World War I. From his earliest days, he was someone who wanted to do something to be helpful to humanity. That impulse and drive may have come in part from an incident that was imprinted in his memory when he was a little boy. At the end of the war, on Armistice Day in 1918, he witnessed a parade filled with soldiers who had come home from battle. Some had been injured or maimed, walking with crutches or using a wheelchair. My father always had a sensitive side, and he was deeply affected by what he had seen.

As he grew older, my father considered going to law school and running for Congress. His mother, who had come over to this country from Russia, astutely advised him that this was not a good decision — especially since, as she put it, “you can’t even win an argument with me.” I think she wanted him to become a rabbi, which I don’t think was in my father’s character.

As it turned out, my father decided to go to City College in New York, and there his studies took an unexpected turn. In his first year, a chemistry course was offered, and this appealed to him. The problem was that the class met on a Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. His parents were very

observant in following Jewish traditions and customs, which meant that my father had a difficult decision to make. In the end, he took the chemistry class, which was the starting point for what turned out to be a long and productive career.

After college, having had such a positive experience training in the sciences, my father enrolled in the New York University College of Medicine. From the start, he knew that he wanted to go into research. During a first-year micro-biology class, a professor spoke about vaccines. He explained that, though doctors could use chemically inactivated toxins to vaccinate against bacterial diseases such as diphtheria and tetanus, they could not use inactivated viruses to immunize against viral diseases such as influenza or polio because protection against infection with viruses required that the body experience an actual infection with the living virus.

That didn’t make any sense to my father, and when he asked his teacher why, the professor basically responded, “Well, just because.” That unsatisfactory answer set my father on a journey of discovery that would fulfill his dream to help humanity, in ways and to a degree that he could never have imagined. And it was a journey on which his family, including his three sons, would be carried along.

Following medical school, after a two-year clinical internship at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, my father went to work with Dr. Thomas Francis Jr., then the head of the epidemiology department at the University of Michigan. My father had previously worked with Dr. Francis on influenza while still a student at NYU College of Medicine, and that had been a seminal experience for him. Working alongside his mentor at Michigan, my father made important contributions to the successful creation of an influenza vaccine, utilizing a chemically inactivated virus, that was introduced for use by the Army at the end of World War II.

In 1947, seeking to head a laboratory of his own, my father moved on to the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. There he took charge of creating the Virus Research Laboratory and, with his growing interest in polio, received a grant for polio research from the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis.

As all of this was going on, my father had married and started a family. He met my mother, Donna, while working one summer at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. They married on 9 June 1939, the day after he graduated from medical school with an M.D. degree. I was born five years later, the first of my parents’ three sons. During my childhood, polio epidemics became an increasing global scourge. I can remember my parents not allowing us to visit a beloved amusement park when we were on vacation, out of fear of our becoming infected. On another occasion, our family accompanied my father to a polio meeting at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia. There I saw a girl at a swimming pool who had been disabled by the disease. Because I was around the same age as the girl, that encounter had a lasting impact on me.

During all this time my father and his team were rigorously working to develop a vaccine that would be effective against all three immunologic types of polio. The first human studies with the experimental vaccine were conducted at the D.T. Watson Home for Crippled Children outside of Pittsburgh. These tests included children who had already experienced some form of paralysis due to polio. Because they had already been infected by at least one of the three types of poliovirus, there was no danger they could become paralyzed again if they were injected with the chemically inactivated virus of the same type. It turned out that when these children were injected with the inactivated virus, their antibodies against the virus were boosted. Since antibodies in the blood stream were all that was needed to prevent the virus from traveling to the brain and spinal cord and killing the nerve cells that control muscle movement, when that information was confirmed, my father knew that the vaccine he and his team had been working on should be a success.

At one point early on, my father had tested the experimental vaccine on himself and his lab workers. And one day it was our turn, me and my two brothers, ages 9, 6, and not quite 3 years old. As you can imagine, I was not very happy to be part of this joyful experience. Our father came home with the vaccine, and he proceeded to sterilize the daunting glass syringes and the metal needles by boiling them on the kitchen stove. I was absolutely not a fan of needles — but what child is? I stood there, miserable and looking out the window, my arm held out and awaiting the injection. And then something miraculous happened: I didn’t feel the needle. It didn’t hurt, unlike every other shot I’d ever had. And for that reason, that day is burnt into my memory forever.

Two years later, on 12 April 1955, my father joined Dr. Francis at a press conference at the University of Michigan. Dr. Francis had been tasked with analyzing the results of the vast clinical trial of the experimental vaccine, and now he made an announcement that would change medical history: The vaccine had been demonstrated to be up to 90 percent effective in preventing polio. Pandemonium broke loose. Kids were let out of school, church bells rang, factory whistles blew. The pall of fear that had pervaded this country for so many years was lifted. I get goose bumps thinking about it even all these years later.

In 1955, more than 10 million children received one or more injections of the Salk vaccine. Within one year, polio cases and deaths in the United States had been nearly halved, a trend that continued and made a vision of polio eradication a possibility.

Today, that goal is getting ever closer to reality. Rotary International has been a champion in ensuring that one day — and, I hope, one day soon — that goal will be reached. Rotary helped found the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, and it continues to put a major emphasis on getting the job done, as does the Gates Foundation, with its generous donations, and the other organizations that are part of the GPEI. Everyone is working unbelievably hard, and practical work is being done on the ground where it’s most essential. Efforts are underway to remove obstacles and deal with societal issues that have impeded progress in some remaining parts of the world.

The contributions Rotary has made toward eradicating polio have been indispensable, and its indomitable spirit has been a driving force in this effort. I’ve had the great pleasure on many occasions of speaking to and with members of Rotary, and each time it has been an uplifting experience. The desire shared by Rotary members to help the world is inspiring and mirrors the driving force in my father’s life.

My father was the author of several books. One of them, recently published in an updated version as A New Reality: Human Evolution for a Sustainable Future, he co-wrote with my brother Jonathan. Seeing that title, and the titles of the other books he wrote, provides insights into where my father’s interests and hopes lay. They also suggest where we should turn our efforts and energies next.

As my father did with polio, we need to go beyond theorizing. We can have grand desires for the human species, but we need to create and utilize real and useful tools that can have a direct impact on societal interactions and environmental imbalances. Humanity seems to be facing monumental problems, but they can be overcome. Just look at what my father accomplished. Seventy years ago, there was a vaccine in a bottle, and today we’re almost at the point of achieving a once unimaginable outcome.

I feel a devotion to my father, and I feel a responsibility to ensure that his ways of thinking and his contributions are fully understood. He embraced the entire world in his scientific, humanistic, and philosophical vision for the future, and the elements of his legacy will continue to reach into everyone’s lives.

Dr. Peter L. Salk is president of the Jonas Salk Legacy Foundation in La Jolla, California, and a part-time professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health.

This story originally appeared in the October 2024 issue of Rotary magazine.

Visit :-

https://www.rotary.org/en/polio-shot-heard-round-world

New Team End Polio campaign reminds people about a tenacious disease

By Etelka Lehoczky

At an event announcing Canada’s contribution of CA$151 million (US$111,233,500) to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, Ramesh Ferris presents a Team End Polio jersey to Canadian Minister of International Development Ahmed Hussen.

Ramesh Ferris wants you to see his legs.

“When people see me walking with my crutches and braces, if I’m not wearing shorts, they do not think of polio,” says Ferris, who contracted the disease at six months old. “But when people see my legs, they’re like, ‘Oh, what happened?’ It starts a discussion around what people can do to work together for a polio-free world.”

Ferris tries to wear shorts whenever he’s hiking or using his hand-cycle, a three-wheeled device powered by hand cranks. And he’s found other ways to channel his athleticism into the fight against polio. In 2008, he hand-cycled 7,140 kilometers (4,437 miles) across Canada to raise awareness and funds for polio eradication.

Using a 27-speed hand-cycle and consuming 5,000 calories a day to maintain his energy, Ferris traveled 400 kilometers (249 miles) every 10 days from British Columbia in the west to Newfoundland in the east. His Cycle to Walk trip raised funds for Rotary International’s End Polio Now effort and other anti-polio projects.

Now Ferris has joined Team End Polio, a new campaign by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative to raise awareness about the need to wipe out the disease. Team End Polio’s starting roster of top international athletes includes several who, like Ferris, have been directly affected by the disease. All are determined to speak up on social media and at sporting events.

Rotary commits funds to polio outbreak response in Gaza

“Polio is one of these forgotten-about diseases that is ‘out of sight and out of mind,’” says Ferris, a member of the Rotary Club of Whitehorse-Rendezvous, Yukon, Canada.

The effort to fully eliminate polio has been a massive project. It’s reduced cases by 99.9% over four decades, and today the wild poliovirus endures in just a few places around the world. And yet, as is true in many races, the final lap is the hardest part.

“It is critical that people realize that polio knows no borders,” says wheelchair athlete Minda Dentler, who contracted polio as an infant. “As long as this disease exists anywhere, it is a threat to children everywhere.”

Dentler used a hand-cycle to complete the New York City marathon in 2006 and later qualified for the Ironman World Championships. It took her two tries, but she became the first woman wheelchair athlete to complete the grueling triathlon. She had to swim 2.4 miles, hand-cycle 112 miles, and propel her racing wheelchair for 26.2 miles, with a time limit for each stage. The second time she competed, she crossed the finish line in 14 hours and 39 minutes.

“I learned how, with perseverance, anyone can overcome obstacles and achieve goals that seem impossible,” says Dentler, who published a children’s book in March titled, “The Girl Who Figured It Out.” She says that same quality is needed for the fight against polio.

“With continued effort from donors and affected countries, we can overcome the remaining challenges and deliver a polio-free world,” she says. “But increased funding and continued commitment to vaccinating every child is essential.”

Like Dentler, the other athletes on Team End Polio embody ideals associated with sportsmanship: strength, dedication, determination, and the ability to work as part of a team.

“When you compete in a sport like football, you have to rely on your teammates to defeat your opponent. The fight against polio is no different,” says Michael Essien, a coach and former star player from Ghana. During a trip to Liberia in June 2024, he says, he witnessed the collaboration and coordination required to implement a polio vaccination campaign.

“To end polio, it will require all of us working together as one team,” he says.

Other members of Team End Polio include:

Ade Adepitan, a polio survivor and two-time wheelchair basketball medalist in the Paralympic Games
Wasim Akram, former captain of Pakistan’s national men’s cricket team and an international cricket commentator
Muhammad Ali, a member of Pakistan’s national men’s cricket team
Junior Bosila Banya, a French polio survivor and professional breakdancer
Bismah Maroof, a former captain of Pakistan’s national women’s cricket team
Ajara Nchout, a Cameroonian professional football player
Anne Wafula Strike, a British polio survivor who was among the first female wheelchair racers from Africa to compete in the Paralympic Games

Ferris’ home country of Canada recently emphasized its commitment to ending polio. On 20 September, Minster of International Development Ahmed Hussen announced a pledge of CA$151 million (US$111,233,500) to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative at a Rotary institute. The donation puts Canada at over $1 billion contributed for polio eradication. At the event where the pledge was announced, Ferris gave Hussen a Team End Polio jersey.

“There have been a copious number of amazing global citizens who have rallied together with one goal in mind, and that is ending polio,” Ferris says. “The good thing about the polio program is that we’re united to cross the finish line. We’re not doing it alone.”

Learn more about Team End Polio and donate to the cause.

‘When,’ not ‘if’: Progress continues toward ending polio

On World Polio Day, Rotary International leaders and public health experts reiterate their commitment to global eradication

By Etelka Lehoczky and Arnold R. Grahl

Eradicating polio around the world is still an attainable goal, Rotary International President Stephanie A. Urchick and public health experts said as they commemorated World Polio Day in the city where the vaccine was developed.

“I know it is a question of when polio will be eradicated, not if,” Urchick told the audience at a livestream event on 24 October in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.

“Our Action Plan talks about improving our impact. That’s really where our polio eradication program shines,” Urchick added. “Millions of children won’t get this crippling disease. Billions of U.S. dollars won’t be spent on ancillary health care costs as a result of this disease. We have made so much progress.”

Rotary leaders, including RI President Stephanie Urchick (middle), and global health experts discuss the future of the polio eradication effort at a World Polio Day event in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, 24 October 2024.

Photo credit: Rotary Zones 33/34

World Polio Day raises awareness and funds for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s work to eliminate the disease. Since Rotary and its partners formed the GPEI in 1988, the number of wild polio cases has decreased by 99.9%. The event highlighted Rotary’s continuing efforts toward complete eradication.

Polio remains endemic in two countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 2024, increased case counts of wild poliovirus and the first case of paralytic polio in Gaza in 25 years served as a reminder that until the disease is fully eliminated everywhere, it remains a threat to children everywhere.

Despite the challenges, Michael K. McGovern, chair of the International PolioPlus Committee, said he remains confident as ever that global eradication is within reach. “We’re in a bumpy period, but we’re going to get this done by continuing to focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan and doing the things that were done so successfully by Rotarians,” he said.

The event included videos featuring polio vaccination workers in the field. Urchick said she was inspired by them during a visit to Karachi, Pakistan, earlier this year.

“Men work diligently to immunize thousands of children every day at traffic checkpoints, while women go house to house to reach families directly,” Urchick said. “Some workers literally climb mountains to vaccinate children in remote locations, and their determination never wavers.”

The livestream event was part of a two-day Rotary zone institute. RI Director Patrick Eakes, who convened the institute, said Pittsburgh was a perfect location because it’s where Dr. Jonas Salk developed the vaccine. “We realized we were in a unique position,” said Eakes, a member of the Rotary Club of Crescent (Greensboro), North Carolina, USA.

Dr. Peter L. Salk, president of the Jonas Salk Legacy Foundation in La Jolla, California, and a part-time professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health, talked about what drove his father to develop the first inactive polio vaccine.

“He just never let go,” Salk recalled. “It was his personality to have a dream and get things done.”

Salk said his father wanted to make a difference in the world from a young age and became interested in science. After working in the U.S. state of Michigan on an influenza vaccine, he came to Pittsburgh in 1947 to work at the virus research lab and received a grant for polio research from the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. That led to his work developing the inactive polio vaccine.

Other presenters at the livestream event included 2016-17 RI President John Germ. Several members of Rotary’s eradication effort also sent video messages.

In a video shown at the event that was originally recorded for the 2023 Rotary International Convention, Gates Foundation co-founder Bill Gates lauded the commitment toward eradication. “When polio is eradicated, it will be one of the biggest advances in public health in human history,” said Gates. The Gates Foundation, a partner in the GPEI, matches up to US$50 million that Rotary raises each year at a 2-to-1 ratio, which means up to US$150 million for the effort each year.

Salk, too, said he was honored to be in a room full of Rotary members who have a passion for solving tough problems.

“Every time I get together with Rotarians,” he said, “I am just uplifted by the quality of humanity that you all radiate and the dedication you put in all the different realms helping the world become a better place.”

Visit:-

https://www.rotary.org/en/when-not-if-progress-continues-toward-ending-polio

Thursday, May 15, 2025

Polio mapping goes high tech

Polio mapping goes high tech

Geotracking ensures fewer children are left behind

Tuesday, May 13, 2025

Polio mapping goes high tech

Polio mapping goes high tech

Geotracking ensures fewer children are left behind

Thursday, April 24, 2025

The polio shot heard round the world

New Team End Polio campaign reminds people about a tenacious disease

New Team End Polio campaign reminds people about a tenacious disease

Related stories

‘When,’ not ‘if’: Progress continues toward ending polio

On World Polio Day, Rotary International leaders and public health experts reiterate their commitment to global eradication