Polio Lab

On 11 September, Rotary Foundation Trustee Fumio Tamamura and Pakistani Rotarians celebrated the opening of a key polio surveillance laboratory in Pakistan, one of seven remaining polio-endemic countries.

The PolioPlus Partners program supported a US$357,075 Rotary Foundation grant for the laboratory at the National Institute of Health in Islamabad. Some of the funding was contributed by District 5240 (California, USA), which raised $156,728 for the project in 2001-02. The Japanese government also provided high-tech equipment worth $115,568.

At the opening ceremony, Japanese Ambassador Minoru Shibuya praised Rotary International and the World Health Organization for their work in supporting the new facility, which is expected to dramatically reduce the amount of time required to accurately diagnose the poliovirus in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"With the opening of this new facility, the stool samples which had been sent to the CDC [U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] lab in Atlanta could be examined locally, saving much time and expense," says Tamamura.

In mid-September, Pakistan had recorded 58 cases of polio in 2003, disheartening news in the effort to eliminate polio. "The remaining focal areas of transmission require extraordinary efforts to reach all children," Abdul Haiy Khan, chairman of RI's National PolioPlus Committee in Pakistan, who also attended the opening, observed earlier this year.

Pakistan borders two of the seven remaining polio-endemic nations, Afghanistan and India, which were respectively hit by 10 and 1,600 cases last year. Together, India, Pakistan, and Nigeria represent more than 95 percent of the world's polio cases. The remaining polio-endemic nations in order of transmission risk, from highest to lowest, are: Egypt, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Niger.

In May, the World Bank approved a US$20 million concessionary loan for the purchase of oral polio vaccine by the government of Pakistan. The loan was provided by an innovative financing partnership that included the World Bank, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Rotary International, and the United Nations Foundation.

On 1 September, Tamamura administered polio vaccine drops outside of Islamabad to mark the start of four days of national immunization. Pakistan's fourth and final NID of the year is scheduled for 14 October, with two more planned for 2004. During his visit, The Foundation Trustee also visited a school in Karachi's slums, one of 15 such schools supported by the Rotary Club of Karachi and Japanese Rotarians.

Since 1996, Japan — Pakistan's largest donor country — has provided $38.5 million in polio vaccine. Japan has pledged to provide $9.6 million in grant aid to assist with immunization activities in December. The grant, made available through UNICEF, will help immunize more than 30 million children.

Also attending the opening of the polio lab were Nobuyuki Yamamura, representative of the Japan International Cooperation Agency, WHO and UNICEF officials, and Robert Keegan, deputy director of the Global Immunization Division at the CDC.