POLIO ERADICATION OUR TOP PRIORITY
In 1986 when the announcement was made that Rotary would undertake the eradication of Polio in the world, goals were set for fund raising. Responses were favorable except for some comments from Japanese Rotrians suggesting that goal for Japan was too low. Yes, too low. Of course goals were generally exceeded country after country but slowly. In 1986 it was clear that Japan intended to exceed its goals and it did. Last week in Islamabad, Pakistan the Japanese government announced it was providing a $4.6 million grant to Pakistan to support the supply of essential polio vaccine for campaigns during 2018-19. Notes of grant were signed and exchanged in Islamabad between the government of Japan, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef).
The grant will support procurement of 25 million doses of oral polio vaccine (OPV) which would be sufficient to vaccinating children under the age of five in high-risk districts across the country thus enabling the programme to quickly close immunity gaps. With this latest grant aid, the Japanese government had contributed about $230 million towards polio eradication initiative since 1996. To achieve and maintain interruption in polio transmission, Japan believed that robust routine immunization was required, and had provided technical assistance for the Expanded Immunization Programme (EPI) in Pakistan since 2001.