Today this year's President of the Rotary International Foundation spoke at a conference of Rotary Clubs in the Niagara region. He is from the Bahamas where he managed for many years one of the larger local hospitals and he has been an active Rotary member during most of his career. During the past two decades he dedicated a lot of time to organize assistance projects in Haiti with a focus on the availability of water & sanitation. Today he spoke about how close we are as humanity to rid the world of the polio disease. No cases for the past two years in northern Nigeria anymore. Four cases in north-west Pakistan and sixteen cases in the east of Afghanistan. This remains the only region in the world where vaccination still faces challenges. Last year's RI President met with Taliban leaders to ask for one day dedicated to no fighting so that UNICEF & Rotary teams could vaccinate, and they agreed. We are so very close to eliminating a disease which crippled and killed so many people around the world 60-70 years ago. The Rotarians around the world are the largest donors towards the vaccination campaign together with the Bill Gates Foundation.
Working on new generations of young professionals to embrace the work Rotary Clubs around the world work on. And many of the new members come from more and more diverse communities which is fantastic to see. Thank you Barry for coming to Niagara and giving the folks here some nice compliments and extra motivation. The Rotarians are a dedicated group of people who have an interest to make their community better and who support such activities also around the world....
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