Rotary Foundation and Polio Plus

Hamish Tait took the Zoom screen for his first full meeting as President of the Rotary Club of St Andrews and welcomed the speaker, Arthur Griffiths. As well as having been Club President himself, Arthur is an officer for Rotary District 1010 – Scotland North – which enables its 90 separate Clubs to come together to share ideas and create lasting change. Arthur’s special, voluntary role is stewardship for Rotary Foundation, the charitable arm of Rotary International that was established over 100 years ago to use Rotary’s global network to help communities all over the world. Arthur began his illustrated talk by showing some examples of projects that Scottish Rotary Clubs have been carrying out, by raising their own funds and then applying for additional support from the Foundation. The examples included disability education in Ghana, eye clinics for remote villages in Sri Lanka and, here at home, a defibrillator for the Community Centre in Forres. What was remarkable about these and all the other projects was how cost effective they were, thanks to Rotary’s network of volunteers. What is equally remarkable is the total number of projects that are supported each year. Unfortunately, Covid-19 has had an impact, as it has on so much else, putting extra pressure on the available funds and delaying some existing projects for reasons of safety.

For the second part of his talk, Arthur focussed on Rotary’s ‘End Polio Now’ campaign, which has helped to eradicate this scourge from every country apart from Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the numbers of new cases are already much reduced. Arthur was able to draw upon his background in veterinary medicine when explaining the different types of the virus and how they can mutate. The Gates Foundation, which has been adding $2 to every dollar raised by Rotary, is now working on a vaccine which would prevent the virus from reverting to its uncontrolled, wild state. Alan Constable was especially well-placed to give the vote of thanks because he had himself helped, as a volunteer, with a polio immunisation project in India.