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In October 2021, the Smithsonian magazine published a sobering article on diphtheria — a disease that terrorized communities until the advent of vaccines. The author reminded us: “Despite all the progress in preventing and treating the disease, diphtheria has not been eradicated and still flares up around the world.” That reminder is not abstract to me. During my first year in the Peace Corps in Togo in 1983, an extension agent I worked with lost his young son to tetanus after a simple foot injury. I can still picture the father’s tears. Measles, another vaccine-preventable disease that had long been controlled in the United States, has resurged globally and is far from benign. My wife grew up in Togo as the eldest child in her family because two older siblings died of measles on the same day in the mid-1960s. Even today, new threats emerge. Just last month, Ebola cases were detected in the Democratic Republic of Congo. When an Ebola case appeared in Nigeria in 2014, a laboratory supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that was originally set up to track polio allowed for the contact tracing needed to stop an outbreak. These stories illustrate the same truth: The infrastructure built for one disease often saves lives from another. Related: Share of Minnesota kindergartners exempt from measles vaccine has nearly doubled in past 10 years These are tense days even for Americans, as access to vaccines and other preventative care becomes more complicated. Yet there is hope. One global vaccination effort demonstrates what sustained commitment can achieve: the fight to eradicate polio. When I was in the Peace Corps (1983-1986), Rotary International was in the midst of a three-year fundraising campaign to immunize the world’s children against polio that eventually led to the launch of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI). There were four partners in 1988: the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, the CDC and Rotary. At the time, more than 350,000 children were paralyzed by polio each year across 125 countries. This year, as of Oct. 23, there have been 38 cases of wild polio in only two countries: Pakistan and Afghanistan. In 2008, seeing the success and challenges of the GPEI, the Gates Foundation pledged to match every dollar raised by Rotary members 2-to-1, and the results have been powerful. More recently, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, has joined the effort. The eradication of polio is within reach, just as smallpox was eradicated almost 50 years ago. Charles Adams Cogan has been the Rotary 5960 PolioPlus team lead since 2008 and is a former Peace Corps Volunteer (Togo) and Fulbright Scholar. During that period, Rotary Clubs in District 5960, including parts of eastern Minnesota and northwestern Wisconsin, have raised more than $1.5 million for polio eradication.
