Rotary rolls up to fight polio
Funding is needed to eradicate polio completely, but also for the immunisation of some 400 million children every year.
The Rotary Club of Hibiscus Coast raised R2 000 with its recent Boerie Roll Sale at Uvongo Spar and got to know a local polio survivor.
The fund-raiser was in aid of Rotary International Foundation’s End Polio Now project.
Sohail Peerzada, owner of the Uvongo Spar and a loyal sponsor of this campaign, feels strongly that no child should suffer from this vaccine-preventable disease.
He annually donates all the ingredients for the boerie rolls which are lovingly prepared and sold on-site by the Rotarians.
Polio is a highly infectious disease caused by a virus.
It invades the nervous system and can cause total paralysis in a matter of hours.
The virus is transmitted person-to-person, spread mainly through the faecal-oral route or, less frequently, by a common vehicle (for example, contaminated water or food) and multiplies in the intestine.
Initial symptoms are fever, fatigue, headache, vomiting, stiffness of the neck and pain in the limbs.
One in 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis (usually in the legs).
Of those paralysed, five to 10 percent die when their breathing muscles become immobilised.
Funding is needed to eradicate polio completely, but also for the immunisation of some 400 million children every year.
Polio eradication would be one of history’s greatest public health achievements, with polio following smallpox to become only the second human disease eliminated from the world.
* Sources: World Health Organisation
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
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