Disease given due attention

The Flamingo Rotary Club will be holding a polio awareness campaign on Saturday, 2 November, in the Goldfields Mall.

Members of the public are asked to come and support the “patients” who will be lying in the “iron lung”.

Ian Buchanan was one of the “patients” who helped raise funds for this cause in 2023. Photo: Supplied

The Flamingo Rotary will be collecting funds to help eradica­te this debilitating disease.

Polio (or poliomyelitis) is a highly infectious disease caused by the poliovirus. This disease cannot be cured, but is preventable by vaccination.

Polio is spread through contaminated food and water, direct contact with infected faeces, or droplets from coughing or sneezing. Failure to eradicate polio could result in as many as 200 000 new cases every year within ten years, all over the world.

Thanks to global vaccination campaigns, the number of polio cases has decreased by 99% since 1988.

Organisations like Rotary International, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) are working towards the eradication of polio.

The only countries in the world that have never stopped the transmission of polio are Pakistan and Afghanistan.