STE. GENEVIEVE – The Ste. Genevieve Rotary Club welcomed Tom Drennan, past Rotary District 6060 Governor and District Polio Programs Chair to a recent meeting. Tom uses his passion for bicycling to help raise money to fight polio and has ridden thousands of miles and participated in numerous group rides for the cause.
(l-r) Rotarians Tom Drennan and Josh Wright
The local club appreciates Drennan’s polio-fighting efforts and the club’s president elect, Josh Wright, presented a check to him for $5,000 to support Rotary’s efforts.
Rotary has been working to eradicate polio for more than 35 years, and its goal of ridding the world of this disease is closer than ever.
As a founding partner of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, Rotary has helped reduced polio cases by 99.9 percent since the first project to vaccinate children in the Philippines in 1979.
Rotary members have contributed more than $2.1 billion and countless volunteer hours to protect nearly 3 billion children in 122 countries from this paralyzing disease. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have matched much of Rotary’s contributions.
Today, polio remains endemic only in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But it’s crucial to continue working to keep other countries polio-free. If all eradication efforts stopped today, within 10 years, polio could paralyze as many as 200,000 children each year.