Polio Plus - The Early Years

In the beginning, the polio campaign was just one project under the Health, Hunger and Humanitarian committee. They organized the project on a country-by-country basis. For its first endeavor, Rotary immunized over 6 million children in the Philippines.

Major changes in the program happened in 1984 when Dr. Carlos Canseco became RI President. He felt more attention needed to be brought to the effort, and he believed mass immunization was the way to fight polio. In 1985, he launched Polio 2005 at the RI convention in Kansas City. It was called Polio 2005, because they felt it would take 20 years to complete their work.

Rotary worked in partnership with other health organizations, but Rotary agreed to be responsible for the cost of the vaccines. The RI Board estimated $120 million dollars would be needed to complete the project. Nothing in Rotary’s 81 year history had been even one-tenth that budget. Many Rotarians feared the club was headed toward worldwide embarrassment.