Coronado Rotary hosted its annual "End Polio Now" Wine Tasting Fundraising on October 5, 2018.  About 150 Rotarians and guests gathered in the welcoming garden at Jim Kaufman's home for a party with a very vital purpose, the worldwide eradication of polio.  Generous donations for special events, such as an afternoon sailing on the bay, a panella dinner in the home of the buyer, an evening of music, art champagne and hors d'oeuvres.  More generous donations were raised through a silent auction and Raise the Paddle segment.
 
Proceeds from the event, chaired by Pat Flynn and Sue Maack, raised $70,000.  The donations will go to support Rotary International's Global Polio Eradication Initiative and will include funds that will be tripled by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  
 
On October 24, 2018, Rotarians will mark World Polio Day.  It is a day to celebrate how far we have come - from an estimated 350,000 cases of polio per year down to just a few in 2018.  But to achieve eradication, we must reach zero cases, and stay at zero worldwide for three consecutive years.
 
DID YOU KNOW:
  • 1 in 200 polio infections leads to irreversible paralysis.
  • 17.4 million people who are currently healthy would have been paralyzed by polio without eradication efforts since 1988.
  • In 2017, Rotary and its partners worked to reach 430 million children in 39 countries during polio immunization campaigns.
  • Unless we completely eradicate polio, within 10 years we could see as many as 200,000 new cases each year all over the world.  The disease is endemic in only three countries, but unless we reach every child with the vaccine, no child anywhere is safe.
If you would also like to make a donation to End Polio Now, please visit coronadorotary.org and click on the End Polio Now link to the right of the website.
 
Photo by Dan Hutchinson