Welcome to the Rotary Schools Ending Polio project. Few children in Australia have ever heard of Polio. Rotary is trying to change that by inviting the 4 million Australian school children to join them in an international project to eliminate this dreadful disease from the world.

Polio is a highly infectious disease caused by a virus. There is no cure. It mainly effects children under 5 years of age and leaves them crippled for life.

When Rotary International started the journey in conjunction with the World Health Organisation some 25 years ago Polio was endemic in 125 countries and there were 360,000 new cases of Polio recorded annually. Today Polio is only endemic in only 4 countries and the total new cases are now well below 1500 per year.

The vaccines are available so no child in the world should ever be crippled by Polio again. Rotary continues to raise funds to purchase and help deliver these vital protective vaccines. Rotarians working globally together with our project partners are very close to eliminating Polio from the world. With the help of the Australian schoolchildren we could reach that goal even quicker.

In addition to the Polio project Rotary offers a great range of youth programs plus other community support activities. So we also like to take the opportunity through this project to build stronger links between schools and their local Rotary Clubs.