It was a Committee Meeting meeting with feedback to the club. For some committees it's fine but for Community Service and Youth it isn't really long enough and no doubt they will go back to having meetings after a Rotary Meeting.
The whole point of attempting to keep things within the framework of the meeting is really for those who have to go back to work on a Friday afternoon.
Thursday Evening at Schwabinger Stuben
Even though this is before our normal Friday meeting you'll only get pictures next week...any dirndl pics I wonder.
It's really an 18th century maids dress but now is often a fashion statement and now made of less coarse material.
Incidentally lederhosen is also peasant working clothes but it has been replaced for work by a material invented by a Bavarian who set up shop in San Francisco, Levi Strauss.
Play Pumps
Brian Leech's enthusiasm for Play Pumps is infectious. We've already put in one this year and now he has found the need for a second one.
Keatlholela is a primary school 45 km east of Kuruman, in the North West. It has 187 learners and 7 educators. Water used to be accessed from a borehole at the school but the pump hasn’t worked for 2 years so water is obtained from the community borehole ONE day a week so the school has to send a donkey cart to fetch the water. The school also relies on rain water which currently is non est. Result, children become dehydrated in the hot weather and the school has to close early and send them all home.
The advantage of sponsoring this PlayPump is that it is relatively close to the first one that has been installed at Koning PS and the 2 can be visited together in one trip.
As for the Koning PlayPump, the cost of this PlayPump, tank, piping and installation is also R125 000. It would be a great help to the school if it could be installed before the year end so that it will all be in operation in the New Year when the hot weather really sets in.
What fascinates me is Brian's ability to find the communities that really need these pumps where the water is also potable. It conjurs up an image of him seeking out the driest parts of the country, visiting them and then saying "What about a pump?" It fits in very nicely with RI's Areas of Focus.
16 Years of Palliative Care.
This Week
It's a social meeting....Mark Franklin is sergeant,.........try and bring some better jokes than his!
ROTARY’S WORLD POLIO DAY EVENT LOOKS AHEAD TO ENDING THE DISEASE FOR GOOD
While the fight to eradicate polio suffered a blow this year when the virus re-emerged in Nigeria, Rotary leaders and top health experts focused Monday on the big picture: the global presence of the paralyzing disease has never been smaller.
The headquarters of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, served as the site of Rotary’s fourth annual World Polio Day event. Some of the biggest names in the polio eradication campaign were there to reflect on the year’s progress and discuss what’s needed to end the disease for good.
More than 200 people attended the special live program, and thousands more worldwide watched online. Jeffrey Kluger, Time magazine’s editor at large, moderated the event.
In a question-and-answer session with Kluger, CDC Director Tom Frieden talked about the latest developments in the effort to eradicate polio.
“We have the fewest number of cases in the fewest number of places in the world right now,” said Frieden. “We continue to make ground against polio, but we’re still recording cases in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria.”
The total number of cases worldwide so far this year is 27, compared with 51 for the same period last year.
Unfortunately, Nigeria slipped back onto the list of countries where polio is endemic this year, after cases appeared in the northern state of Borno, which was under the control of Boko Haram militants until recently. The World Health Organization estimates that the virus has been circulating in the region for five years. The country was on the verge of celebrating two years without any polio infections.
But this hasn’t stopped Rotary and its partners, who are working with the Nigerian government, Chad, Cameroun, and parts of the Central African Republic, from executing a sweeping emergency response. Shortly after the outbreak, a robust immunization campaign targeted about 1 million children with both oral and inactivated polio vaccines.
“Because the new cases were only detected due to ongoing surveillance efforts,” said Frieden. “We shouldn’t be surprised to see more cases, because better surveillance means better detection of all polio cases.”
Polio eradication efforts continue to make progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In Afghanistan, cases dropped from 13 in 2015 to eight so far this year. In Pakistan, they decreased from 38 to 15.
Frieden cited innovative tactics for reaching children in Pakistan who were often missed in the past. These include placing permanent vaccination sites at entry points to the country, provinces, and large cities. Rotary has funded the purchase of cell phones for vaccination teams, so they can send data to health centers immediately.
“The virus is cornered, we just have to make sure never to let it out again,” Frieden added.
CELEBRITIES JOIN ROTARY’S GATHERING
Dennis Ogbe, a polio survivor and Paralympian athlete, told his personal story of survival. Ogbe contracted polio at age three at a clinic near his home in rural Nigeria while being treated for malaria.
Ogbe competed in the Paralympics in Sydney in 2000 and London in 2012. But he says the toughest challenge he’s faced is helping to rid the world of polio.
Shira Lazar, host of the show “What’s Trending,” gave a social media update during the live streamed event in which she announced that more than 3,000 World Polio Day events were happening around the world. In Pakistan, a huge End Polio Now message was illuminated at the Kot Diji Fort in the Khairpur district.
Video addresses came from Maryn McKenna, author and journalist, and new polio ambassador Jenna Bush Hager, chair of UNICEF’s Next Generation, a journalist, and an author. Hager’s father-in-law is a polio survivor.
Rotary, with support from the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, also debuted a virtual reality presentation that transported attendees to the streets of India and Kenya, where they interacted with polio survivors and heard their stories.
“This is very good technology to put people in places where polio has affected so many,” says Reza Hossaini, director of polio eradication for UNICEF. “It’s important we see the places and people we are helping with our polio eradication programs.”
Earlier in the day, Frieden and Rotary International President John F. Germ announced major contributions to polio eradication. The Canadian government committed $10 million, and Michael Bloomberg, businessman, philanthropist, and former mayor of New York City, donated $25 million.
Rotary has contributed more than $1.6 billion to polio eradication since taking on the virus in 1979.
“We started this more than 30 years ago,” said Germ. “We’ve stuck with it all this time. And soon, we’re going to finish it.”
No comments:
Post a Comment