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How to donate
You can help eradicate polio
To financially support Rotary’s final eradication of Polio:
- Contact the Rotary club in your suburb or town. Here is a list of Clubs in our District
- Contact our Polio Eradication chair
- Donate online to help in the fight to End Polio Now
- Credit card donations can be made by phone on (02) 9635 3537
- Send cheques to: Australian Rotary Foundation Trust, PO Box 1415, Parramatta, NSW, 2124
Donations are tax deductible (cheques must be made out to "Australian Rotary Foundation Trust").
For more information, visit Rotary End Polio, or Rotary Down Under at www.rotaryaustralia.org.au/endpolio for articles about Polio, or contact Rotary International in Australia on 02 9635 3537.
About Polio Eradication
Since 1988, Rotary has been in partnership with the World Health Organisation, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, and UNICEF – along with other humanitarian organisations and national governments - to achieve this lofty goal. It will be only the second time in history that a major disease has been eradicated from the world’s population – smallpox being the first.
Dr Margaret Chan, CEO of WHO went public last June to express her admiration and support for the Rotary International organisation and its 1.2 million members who to date have raised more than US$800 million and contributed countless volunteer hours to protect more than two billion children in 122 countries from the threat of polio.
She pledged the entire resources of WHO to assist Rotary and other partners to complete the historic mission.
When Rotary launched its Polio eradication program, there were more than 350,000 severe cases of the disease worldwide each year. In the year ended June 30, 2008, there were fewer than 2,000 cases contained in just four countries.
Such has been the success of the campaign that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation of Microsoft fame has also thrown its considerable resources behind the program, recently awarding Rotary two challenge grants totalling US$355 million, which Rotary has pledged to match with an additional US$200 million, with all of the resulting US$555 million earmarked for polio eradication. Rotary has also played a major role in convincing donor governments to contribute over US$4 billion to the effort.