"Denver Rotary Rededicates Polio Plus Sculpture
June 6th was a very special day in our Denver Rotary history. As part of our offsite Rotary luncheon in the Fulginiti Pavilion on the Anschutz Medical Campus, the Rotary Club of Denver rededicate our PolioPlus sculpture in its permanent location outside the pavilion in the Boettcher Commons area. It was a special day indeed.
The program featured our very own Grant Wilkins, a polio survivor himself. In addition to being a Past Club President, Grant is also a Past District Governor and Past Rotary International Director. Other speakers include our Club President Jim McGibney and fellow member and District End Polio chair Peg Johnston. Both Grant and Jim’s message was very moving and heartfelt. Peg provided the facts that we all need to hear and yet celebrate that we are “This Close”. Other dignitaries included several past, current and incoming District Governors; Lynn Hammond, TRF Trustee; and Greg Podd, incoming RI Director, as well as friends from the University of Colorado Denver and the community. Over 100 in total were in attendance for this celebration.
As many of you know, Grant Wilkins led Denver Rotary’s polio eradication efforts, and inspired world-renowned sculptor Glenna Goodacre to create the sculpture in 1991. It depicts children receiving the polio vaccine from a Rotarian, and was formerly located at the World Trade Center in downtown Denver. Rotarian Richard Gooding donated the statue to Denver Rotary and another one to Rotary Interna- tional in Evanston, IL.
Denver Rotary has donated the statue to the Regents of the University of Colorado. A plaque was also installed to acknowledge a Boettcher Foundation’s grant to fund the refurbishment and relocation of the sculpture.
Rotary’s original polio eradication program began in the mid 1980’s and Denver Rotary was the top club for donations, generating nearly $500,000 toward the cause. Over time, Rotarians have traveled from Denver on dozens of missions to provide vaccine to children around the world. Today only three countries remain where polio has not been eradicated: Nigeria (16 cases), Pakistan (6), Afghanistan (2), Somalia (4), and Kenya (2). (Somalia and Ken- ya were previously polio free.) Total worldwide year-to-date is 41 diagnosed paralytic polio cases, vs 64 a year ago.
On a recent National Immunization Day in India, 70 million children under 5 years of age were immunized in a single day. It costs about $1 billion a year to continue needed immunizations at 60 cents per child.
At the recent Global Vaccine Summit, $4 billion of the projected $5.5 billion cost to complete eradication in 2018, was pledged by philanthropists and governments. $1.8 billion came from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation." (from (
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"Polio (also called poliomyelitis) is a contagious, historically devastating disease that was virtually eliminated from the Western hemisphere in the second half of the 20th century. Although polio has been around since ancient times, its most extensive outbreak occurred in the first half of the 1900s until the polio vaccine was introduced in 1955.
At the height of the polio epidemic in 1952, nearly 60,000 cases with more than 3,000 deaths were reported in the United States alone. However, with widespread vaccination, wild-type polio, or polio occurring through natural infection, was eliminated from the United States by 1979 and the Western hemisphere by 1991." (from (
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