Immediate Past District Governor Richard Green presented banners to President Stuart Williams of the Rotary Club of Wolverhampton and others in recognition of their contributions to the Rotary Foundation’s campaign to eliminate polio.

Presenting the banners to the clubs, Richard, said the awards recognised the club’s ‘tremendous giving’ and added that there was ‘good news.’

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“For 30 years, the Rotary Foundation has been spearheading a campaign to rid the world of polio. When the campaign started, there were over 1,000 new cases of polio somewhere in the world every day.

“Since January this year there have been a total of just five new cases and three months have now passed without a single new case being reported.

“To quote a previous adage, we are now very close to eliminating polio, though we cannot relax.  Donations must continue to fund the ongoing programme of vaccinations to be followed by three years of surveillance before we can finally declare that polio has been eliminated.”

He added that Rotary’s polio office in Delhi was closing at the end of June as a result of the successful programme.  India and Africa were now polio free and the disease only existed in Afghanistan and Pakistan.