Weekly Elixir – Rotary Club of Anguilla…for the week of November 9, 2009
Rotary clubs sponsor Perlman concert to raise ‘End Polio Now’ fundsBy MELODY PARKER, melody.parker@wcfcourier.com | Cedar Falls, Iowa, CEDAR FALLS, Iowa - Four area Rotary clubs are using violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman's sold-out concert Sunday to bring attention to the "End Polio Now" campaign.
The superstar musician, who contracted polio at age 4, will perform at the Gallagher-Bluedorn Performing Center on the University of Northern Iowa campus.
The concert is sponsored by the Waterloo, Cedar Falls and Waverly Rotary clubs as a fundraiser. The clubs and individual members contributed $10,000 for the sponsorship. Proceeds will help match a $355 million challenge to Rotary International from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
In addition, area Rotarians will host a presentation at 4 p.m. Sunday at Maucker Union on the UNI campus, followed by a dinner. Dr. Robert Scott of Cobourg, Ontario, Canada, will be the guest. Scott chaired Rotary Foundation's International Polio Plus Committee for two years and travels globally to raise funds. He'll be joined by Cedar Falls resident Doug Oberman, a retired attorney and polio victim. His appearance is conditional on his health.
"Eradicating polio worldwide has been Rotary's major objective for more than 20 years, and we've nearly accomplished it. There are four countries - India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria - were we are still working, and in certain parts of those countries, polio cases have been drastically decreased. Our focus is to generate dollars and raise awareness because many people have forgotten about polio," said Roger Kueter, chairman of End Polio Now, District 5970. His wife is a polio victim.
In 1985 Rotarians set out to raise $120 million to immunize children worldwide against polio. Working with their partners, the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than two billion doses of the Sabin vaccine have been administered, reducing the number of countries where polio is endemic from 165 to four. A real-time polio case count is on the Web at http://www.polioeradication.org/casecount.asp.
Rotarian Dave Buck and his wife Ruth traveled to northern India in 1999 to work with doctors in clinics administering the vaccine.
"Children came in and we gave them each two drops on the tongue and marked their fingernails with a purple marker to show they had been vaccinated," Buck said. "Then we went door-to-door, and we were quite well received. Rotary is making a very strong effort to eradicate the disease."
Source = http://www.wcfcourier.com/news/
Rotary Club of Waterloo, Iowa - http://www.clubrunner.ca/CPrg/home/homeF.asp?cid=4444
Rotary Club of Cedar Falls, Iowa - http://www.cedarfallsrotary.org/cfr/
http://www.waverlyrotary.org/
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About Itzhak Perlman and PolioThe world falls in love with music when Itzhak Perlman takes up his violin. A superstar by any standard and a rarity in the classical field, Perlman has taken hold of the public imagination as few violin virtuosos ever have, bringing joy to millions with his playing.
Having lost the use of his legs after falling victim to polio at the age of four, Perlman always sits as he plays. But he never fails to bring audiences to their feet.
Perlman's tone has been described as aristocratic, but his playing is decidedly populist: from the most jaded music lovers to the youngest initiates whose love of music Perlman loves to encourage, it is all but impossible to remain unmoved by the musician and his music. His adventurous repertory encompasses virtually the entire classical repertory for the violin as well as some of the most challenging and exciting music of today. A master of baroque, classical, romantic and modern music, he also has lavished his intensely joyful string sounds on everything from the brave old world of klezmer to the limitless frontiers of jazz.
His own arrangements of Scott Joplin's ragtime classics have added immeasurably to performance tradition of the American repertory. His heartrending violin solos in the John Williams soundtrack score for Steve Spielberg's Oscar-winning picture Schindler's List proved to be one of Perlman's own proudest achievements. His most surprising, so far, has been his operatic debut, as a bass, singing the small role of the Jailer in James Levine's recording of Puccini's Tosca starring Renata Scotto and Placido Domingo.
Source - http://www.kennedy-center.org/calendar/?fuseaction=showIndividual&entity_id=3472&source_type=A***************
Perlman contracted polio at the age of four. He made a good recovery, learning to walk with the use of crutches. Today, he generally uses crutches for mobility and plays the violin while seated.
In 1987, he joined the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra for their concerts in Warsaw and Budapest, as well as other Eastern bloc countries. He toured with the IPO in the spring of 1990 for their first-ever performance in the USSR, with concerts in Moscow and Leningrad, and toured with the IPO again in 1994, performing in China and India.
Source - http://its-a-raggedy-life.blogspot.com/2007/10/itzhak-perlman.html***************
Itzhak Perlman and the New York Philharmonic – the Concert to End PolioThis December, world-renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra will take the stage in New York's Lincoln Center for the Concert to End Polio. The cause is especially close to Perlman's heart, given his personal battle to overcome polio as a small child.
The show is the joint effort of international humanitarian organization Rotary International and cause entertainment agency Commit Media. Rotary has been committed to eradicating polio for almost 20 years, since launching the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in 1988 with the World Health Organization, the Center for Disease Control and UNICEF.
Over the last 20 years, the fight against global polio has had incredible success. In the 1980s, polio affected a thousand new children around the world every day. Today, smaller and smaller numbers of new cases are reported each year. However, the fight isn't over -- polio still remains endemic in India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Afghanistan.
Tickets for the concert range from $70 to $200 dollars and are available for sale now. Rotary International is also accepting contributions toward the eradication of polio around the globe, made extra easy by their option to donate five dollars from your cell phone. Rotary International hopes to raise $200 million to match the challenge of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's $355 million grants. These funds will go directly to provide polio vaccines around the world.
This story was originally posted on Causecast.org
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/15/itzhak-perlman-and-the-ne_n_323151.html&cp****************
…And this last bit is from www.rotary.org – About PolioAlthough the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) has faced sobering challenges in the past year, officials say it is moving forward in key political, technical, financial, and operational areas.
Stepped-up efforts to end the disease in the four endemic countries -- Afghanistan, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan -- are paying off, they say.
"Rotary International has played an extraordinarily special role [in the GPEI], not just as one of the initiators but in bringing financial resources, political advocacy, and volunteerism on the ground to getting the job done," said Dr. Bruce Aylward, director of the GPEI at the World Health Organization, speaking to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., in June.
Aylward said that all levels of government in the four countries are committing unprecedented support for the polio eradication effort by monitoring the performance of immunization activities and holding local authorities accountable for the results.
According to WHO, the incidence of polio in India in 2009 has dropped by 28 percent to 284 cases as of 8 September, compared with 397 cases over the same period a year ago. Monthly immunization campaigns in the highest-risk areas have reduced wild poliovirus type 1 -- the more dangerous of the two remaining strains -- to record lows. Type 1 causes paralysis in about 1 out of every 200 children infected, versus 1 out of every 1,000 children with type 3.
In Nigeria, the incidence of polio has decreased by 41 percent to 379 cases, from 646 cases a year ago. By early 2009, the proportion of unimmunized children in the highest-risk states had fallen below 10 percent for the first time.
Unrest along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border has resulted in a slight increase in the number of cases in both countries in the past year. Between large-scale immunization campaigns, however, teams have exploited lulls in the conflict to enter normally inaccessible areas and give children an additional dose of vaccine. In Afghanistan, the wild poliovirus is endemic only in the south, and about 80 percent of children live in polio-free areas.
Rotarians in Pakistan have encouraged the national government to give strong support to ending polio. In early 2009, Pakistan launched the Prime Minister's Action Plan for Polio Eradication. On behalf of Rotary International in August, International PolioPlus Committee Chair Robert S. Scott recognized Pakistan's president, Asif Ali Zardari, with a Polio Eradication Champion Award for his outstanding support for a polio-free world.
A new vaccine will be introduced in India as early as November to help stop the transmission of the type 1 and type 3 wild polioviruses. (Type 2 has been eradicated globally except in Nigeria.) This bivalent vaccine, health officials believe, will multiply the gains made during the past year toward eradicating polio. Intended to complement, not replace, monovalent and trivalent vaccines already in use, the bivalent vaccine will also be considered for Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan.
Worldwide, the number of polio cases has dropped from more than 350,000 in 1988, when the GPEI began, to 1,651 in 2008.
"This is a great improvement from the worst days of polio epidemics," said Rotary Foundation Trustee Chair Glenn E. Estess Sr. "But it is not good enough, and it will not be good enough until the number is zero. We cannot pause or slacken our efforts."
Global health experts are calling the push to end polio "the final inch," in light of the remaining 1 percent of cases that are the most difficult and expensive to prevent. Rotary's US$200 Million Challenge, which ends 30 June 2012, is seen as crucial to the initiative's success.
"This is an absolutely devastating disease that affects the poorest, most marginalized communities in the world," Aylward said. "We have the tools to eliminate it forever."
