October 24 is World Polio Day. To mark it, Museum London and the Rotary Club of London South have paired up to create this small exhibition.
Rotarians have raised billions of dollars and dedicated countless hours to eradicate poliomyelitis, better known as polio. Rotary began to fight polio in 1979. It launched a program to immunize 6 million children in the Philippines.
In 1988, Rotary joined the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. That year, 350,000 children in more than 125 countries were paralysed by the disease.
Today, immunization has reduced reported polio cases around the world by 99.99%. And, as of 2019, polio is only regularly found, or endemic, in two countries: Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Image: Photograph, Collection of Museum London, Gift of the London Health Sciences Centre, 2004.