Rotary in the News!

Anchorage Daily News (Alaska)
February 20, 2007

Voice of the Times

Alaska Volunteers join Polio Battle

Fourteen Alaskans flew to India last week to help in the ongoing battle to wipe polio off the planet. The 14 - all members of Alaska Rotary clubs - were part of a 30-member team from 10 states and Sweden that helped immunize children against the crippling disease. The Rotary volunteers paid their own way and spent four days going house-to-house in remote Indian villages administering oral vaccine to children under the age of 5.

Rotary International has taken on the impossible-sounding mission of wiping polio from the planet. But since the project started in 1985, new cases of the disease have dropped from 350,000 children a year to just 2,000 last year.

Rotarians have chipped in $616 million for the effort, including $72 million for India, one of the few remaining places where the disease continues to strike.

The Alaska Rotarians are Alison Bell, Bob Weel, Don Black, former Anchorage City Manager Harry Kieling, Howard Zatkin, Jane Little, Jon Deisher, Judy Doyon, Martha Reinbold, Michael Jeffery, Rebecca Deisher, Renee Stewart, Tania Deisher and Toni Holmes.