RI General Secretary and CEO John Hewko's address to the World Vaccine Congress in Washington, DC. The speech was given on 12 April 2012

1. RI General Secretary John Hewko’s Address to
the World Vaccine Congress – 12 April 2012
Washington, DC
It is my honor and privilege to be here at the World
Vaccine Congress and to proudly represent the 1.2
million men and women of Rotary
And on behalf of the 34,000 Rotary clubs worldwide,
let me also express my sincerest gratitude to every
person in this room. Because if it weren’t for you —
the professionals who fund and conduct vaccine
research — who develop, produce, and distribute

2. these lifesaving agents — we at Rotary could not do
what we do.
And what do we do?
As you saw in the video: We eradicate polio.
We do other things too, of course. Rotary clubs
support literacy and education. We promote
maternal and child health. We improve access to
clean water and sanitation.
But Rotary’s highest priority is the eradication of
polio.

3. This crippling childhood disease has been Rotary’s
sworn enemy for more than three decades, and you
provide us and our partners with the weapons — the
vaccines — that have carried us to the threshold of
victory. Thanks to vaccines, humanity was able to
conquer smallpox. And now we are poised to make
history a second time by eradicating polio.
But before I talk in more detail about how close we
truly are to a polio-free world, I want to share a little
story about the polio vaccine. Call it a pop-culture
tidbit that perhaps illustrates just how much a part of

4. our lives vaccines have become — in ways that we
don’t always expect.
A few weeks ago, I came across a news story about
a gentleman named Robert Sherman, who had just
passed away at the age of 86.
His obituary indicated that he was an award-winning
composer who did a great deal of work for Disney
Studios. One of his assignments was to write the
songs for the 1964 musical, Mary Poppins, a very
popular movie that I certainly remember, and I
imagine many of you do too.

5. One day, Mr. Sherman found himself struggling with
the lyrics for one of the film’s most important songs.
He needed a catchy phrase around which to build
the song — to anchor it. Something memorable. But
try as he might, nothing seemed to work.
Then his 8-year-old son came home from school.
The father asked the age-old question: “So how was
school?”
“Great, we got the polio vaccine today,” came the
response.

6. Mr. Sherman assumed it was delivered by injection.
“Did it hurt?”
“Nah,” the boy said. “They just stuck the medicine on
a lump of sugar.”
A light bulb popped above the father’s head, and an
instant classic was born.
“A Spoon Full of Sugar Helps the Medicine Go
Down.”
Yes, the same vaccine that has saved millions of
children from a lifetime of disability also inspired one

7. of the most memorable songs in Hollywood history,
a song that helped Mr. Sherman win an Academy
Award for Best Original Score that year.
I would say that’s a great example of creative, off-
label use.
Now let me shift gears and take a look at how
Rotary and our partners in the Global Polio
Eradication Initiative have put the oral polio vaccine
to its intended use.
And to great effect, I must say.

8. Rotary officially took on polio eradication as our
number one priority when we started our PolioPlus
Program in 1985. We were the first NGO to address
the problem.
In 1988, Rotary was joined by the World Health
Organization, UNICEF, and the US Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention to launch the Global
Polio Eradication Initiative. And more recently, the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has joined the
cause.

9. Rotary’s chief responsibilities are fundraising,
advocacy, and mobilizing volunteers — and we do a
very good job at all three.
In fact, to date Rotarians have contributed more than
$1.2 billion to the polio eradication effort.
Many consider the polio eradication initiative to be
the most ambitious and successful public-private
partnership ever forged. And I want to get back to
the private sector part of the equation in a few
minutes, because it’s very important and it speaks
directly to many of us here today — as private sector
professionals.

10. But first, let’s look at what this partnership has
accomplished so far.
Since the initiative began its work to immunize the
world’s children against polio, the incidence of polio
has dropped by more than 99 percent — from
350,000 cases a year to fewer than 700 for all of
2011. This year, we’ve had 36 cases worldwide as
of April 1, well below the case-count at the same
point in 2011.
Think about these numbers.

11. We have reached more than two-and-a-half
BILLION children with the oral polio vaccine. Polio
eradication activities have reached more families
than any other public health initiative in history –
introducing millions of parents to the basic concepts
of preventive health care.
In doing so, we have prevented more than 5
MILLION cases of childhood paralysis and hundreds
of thousands of pediatric deaths.
Already this year, we have celebrated the long-
anticipated milestone of seeing India removed from
the list of polio-endemic countries, leaving only

12. Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan as nations where
the wild poliovirus has never been stopped.
And because this is such an important milestone,
let’s look a little more closely at India, a country of
more than a billion people and a host of challenges
— among them poverty, pollution, and poor
sanitation — challenges that until recently made
India an epicenter of polio.
When the eradication initiative began, India was
experiencing about 75,000 new polio cases a year.

13. And if you have spent any time at all in India, you
have seen the ravages of polio for yourself —
children and adults permanently disabled, unable to
walk — the so-called crawlers of the streets — and
most of them with little hope of receiving any
meaningful treatment or rehabilitation.
However, defeating polio in India didn’t “just happen.”
Instead, India’s progress demonstrates — perfectly
— how determination, persistence, and planning will
ultimately win the day.
Year after year, thousands of health workers and
volunteers — many of them Rotarians — have

14. methodically carried out massive immunization
rounds — called National Immunization Days — in
an effort to reach every Indian child under age five
with the oral polio vaccine.
This means going door-to-door — from the remotest
villages to the teeming urban slums — to make sure
no child is missed.
Public awareness rallies drive home the importance
of vaccinations.
Parental misgivings and cultural misconceptions are
identified and addressed.

15. Detailed records are kept. Home addresses are
logged.
Even the children themselves become living medical
records — their pinky fingers dyed purple to show
they have received the vaccine.
Over and over again these immunization rounds
take place — vaccinating more than 170 million
children each time. Then come the mop-up rounds,
targeting communities where children may have
been missed or where risk is particularly high.

16. And sure enough, over time, India’s polio infection
rate began to drop. By 2009, new cases totaled just
over 700. In 2010, only 42 cases were reported. In
2011, there was only one case — a young girl in
West Bengal — recorded on January 13 of that year.
And that was it.
On January 13, 2012, India celebrated a full year
without one new case of polio. India’s removal from
the endemic list was announced in February during
a Polio Summit in New Delhi — a meeting convened
jointly by Rotary and the Indian Health Ministry.

17. Ladies and gentlemen, if polio can be beaten in
India, it can be beaten anywhere.
Of course, the vaccine industry has been vital to our
progress.
In India, for example, it was very likely that the
introduction of the new bivalent vaccine — which
targets poliovirus types 1 and 3 — contributed
substantially to the steep case-count reductions we
saw in 2010 and 2011.
The swift production and deployment of the bivalent
vaccine resulted from an extraordinary collaboration

18. between WHO, UNICEF, government regulatory
agencies and — of course — the vaccine companies.
Throughout the history of the polio eradication
initiative, the vaccine industry has been amazing in
its ability to continually and quickly reconfigure the
polio vaccines to make sure we have the right
weapons at the right time to use against this
tenacious disease.
Polio vaccine producers have been incredibly
generous in negotiating prices to help make
vaccines affordable to developing countries, even

19. donating vaccine supplies for use in emergency
responses to sudden outbreaks.
When such emergencies occur, we know we can
rely on our pharmaceutical industry allies to deploy
the right vaccine in the quantities needed to respond
swiftly and effectively.
Trivalent. Monovalent. Bivalent. Each type of oral
polio vaccine has proven indispensable to our effort.
And as we approach the end game with polio, it is
almost certain that injectable, inactivated polio
vaccine — IPV — will be introduced into the mix to

20. help in the final stages of eradication and our
transition into the post-eradication era.
Yes, I said post-eradication era, but let us not get
ahead of ourselves. There is still much to do — and
serious challenges to overcome — before we reach
that point.
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative retains an
Independent Monitoring Board that issues quarterly
reports that take a very critical look at our strategies
and practices.

21. These reports provide a valuable reality check that
keeps us from becoming too giddy over our
successes – even India’s milestone, as wonderful
and important as that is.
While acknowledging India’s success, the board in
its most recent report said we simply have to do a
better job on-the-ground – at the local level – to
reach every child with the vaccine in the remaining
polio-affected countries.
This means giving the vaccinators the resources and
tools they need to get the job done — better training,

22. fair compensation, creative incentives, adequate
support, continuous motivation.
We have to make sure that the changes and
improvements we make at the organizational level
are put into practice at the community level, where it
counts.
The Independent Monitoring Board reminds us that
beyond the three endemic countries, so-called “re-
established polio” has become persistent in Angola,
Chad, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

23. And 20 additional countries have had smaller polio
outbreaks since the start of 2010. Again, these are
countries where the poliovirus had once been
stopped.
This is alarming, to be sure. And it demonstrates
why it is so critically important to stop the
transmission of the poliovirus in the three endemic
countries, which are the reservoir that enables the
disease to re-establish itself elsewhere.
For example, in 2011, polio cases in non-endemic
countries totaled 310, almost as many as the 340
cases in the endemic countries.

24. To me, one of the most surprising outbreaks last
year occurred in China, which had been polio-free
for more than a decade. The 21 cases there were
genetically linked to the same strain of the type 1
poliovirus circulating in neighboring Pakistan – once
again, proof that we must stop polio in the endemic
counties at all costs.
And speaking of costs.
As you would expect, funding remains the single
biggest challenge to the Global Polio Eradication
Initiative.

25. To date, the world has spent more than $8 billion on
polio eradication. Yet, the initiative right now faces a
funding gap of more than $1 billion in order to carry
out immunization activities through 2012-2013.
Believe me — we are working hard to close that gap.
In January of this year, we at Rotary announced that
our membership had succeeded in raising more than
$200 million in new money for polio eradication. And
when you think about the state of the global
economy during the past few years, it makes what
our members did even more impressive.

26. This fundraising effort was in response to a $355
million Challenge Grant from the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation, which has added another $50
million to the total to recognize Rotary’s commitment.
To date, Rotary and the Gates Foundation each has
contributed more than $1 billion to polio eradication.
In addition to raising funds for polio eradication,
Rotary advocates as a global organization to
encourage the world’s governments to commit public
resources to a cause that benefits all families, no
matter where they live. Because Rotary is present in

27. more than 200 countries and regions, this has
proven to be a very effective tactic.
As I mentioned earlier, you can see how important
the private sector is to polio eradication.
Without the leadership, participation, support, and
cooperation of the private sector — vaccine
manufacturers, foundations, the professional and
community leaders in Rotary clubs — polio
eradication would still be a pipe-dream, not a global
health initiative that is 99 percent of the way to
achieving its goal.

28. In fact, for the purposes of polio eradication, we
could reverse the order, and call it a PRIVATE-public
partnership, because the private sector was there
first, leading the way.
It was the private sector — Rotary — that proved to
the World Health Assembly that polio eradication
was even feasible.
In 1979, the same year that smallpox was declared
eradicated, Rotary committed $750,000 through its
own grant program to buy polio vaccine to immunize
6.3 million children in the Philippines, which at the
time had the highest polio rate in the West Pacific.

29. By 1982, the incidence of polio in the Philippines
had dropped by 68 percent. Using the Philippine
experience as a model, Rotary launched successful
polio immunization projects in several other Asian,
African, and South American countries over the next
few years.
Rotary’s early successes in these countries
demonstrated that millions of children could be
systematically immunized against polio.
Rotary then mobilized its worldwide membership to
raise an initial war chest of $247 million to vaccinate

30. all of the world’s children, easily doubling its original
goal of $120 million. And as I said earlier, we
established our PolioPlus Program in 1985.
With such solid groundwork in place, in 1988 the
World Health Assembly adopted the historic
resolution that formally targeted polio for eradication,
thus creating the Global Polio Eradication Initiative,
the wonderful partnership we’ve been talking about.
And I must add that a key vaccine researcher was
with us from the beginning. Dr. Albert Sabin was a
staunch ally of Rotary and spoke at two Rotary
International conventions, in 1980 and 1985, to

31. encourage Rotary to embrace polio eradication as
our global cause.
Dr. Sabin was a visionary. He could see the history-
making potential of his oral polio vaccine, delivered
to the world’s children through the resources of
Rotary, an organization of everyday business and
professional people committed to the goal of a polio-
free world.
Yes, it has become increasingly clear to me that
private sector leadership is one of the key
components to any valid solution to community

32. problems the world over — and polio historically has
been a major one.
The continuing support of the world’s governments
is by all means crucial to our success – of course it
is — but governments alone cannot eradicate polio.
But by working together, as a team — leveraging the
strengths of both the public and private sectors —
WE CAN eradicate polio. And we will.
So what will be our legacy when polio is finally gone
for good?

33. For one thing, the world’s $8 billion investment will
be protected. In fact, eradication will result in net
benefits estimated at $40 billion to $50 billion over
the next two decades.
Most of the benefits will accrue in developing
countries, as per capita production goes up and
health care costs drop after the burden of polio is
lifted.
Another tangible benefit is the solid public health
infrastructure that polio eradication will leave in
place — systems that can be used for the delivery of
other vital health services.

34. For example, active disease-surveillance networks
have been established in all of these countries,
assets that can be readily repurposed to address
other diseases, such as measles, malaria, and HIV.
Once achieved, polio eradication will set the stage –
and provide the inspiration — for the next great
global health initiative.
But the most important legacy, of course, will be our
collective gift to children everywhere: a polio-free
world.

35. This realization hit me hard — and in a very
emotional way — last November in Mumbai, where
my wife and I had our first opportunity to vaccinate
children as part of a Subnational Immunization Day.
The first child I immunized that day was a little girl. I
can honestly say that the feeling of joy and pride that
I felt as I placed the vaccine drops into her mouth
will live with me forever.
Two small drops and a lifetime of misery is
prevented.

36. There are few certainties in life, but at least her
parents can be certain — as I am certain — that
polio will not rob that child of her future.
What more can I say?
It was a truly humbling experience, and I thank you
for enabling me — and the thousands of my fellow
Rotarians who have devoted countless hours to
immunize the world’s children — to have such a
profound and powerful impact on another human’s
life.

37. And I also invite YOU to become personally involved
in our cause.
Use your voices. After you leave the World Vaccine
Congress and return to your homes and to your jobs,
tell your families and colleagues how the polio
vaccines that you develop — that you manufacture,
distribute, and regulate — are helping us to make
history.
Together, we WILL End.Polio.Now.
Thank you.