A modified vaccine offers hope that eradication is closer than ever

By Jason Keyser

In mid-2017, two groups of 15 strangers lived together for 28 days each in a ring of shipping containers assembled in the parking lot of Antwerp University Hospital in Belgium. They had access to books and movies, a small courtyard for barbecues, a common kitchen and dining room, and a fitness room — all of it behind secure interlocking doors and under the watch of personnel in protective gowns.

What sounds like a reality TV or sci-fi scenario was, in fact, a remarkable clinical trial of the latest weapon in the battle to eradicate polio — a reengineered vaccine called the novel oral polio vaccine type 2, or nOPV2. The study aimed to evaluate whether the altered formula, the first major update to polio vaccines in about six decades, could help end outbreaks of circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus, also known as variant poliovirus. Such cases arise in rare instances when the live but weakened virus contained in oral polio vaccines circulates in areas of low vaccine coverage and mutates back into a dangerous form that can infect people who have not been fully vaccinated.

These variant poliovirus outbreaks have emerged over the past two decades as a significant stumbling block in the effort by Rotary and its partners in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) to wipe out the disease. The outbreaks are different from those driven by wild poliovirus, which circulated naturally in the environment for millennia and remains endemic in just two countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan. But the outcome is the same — the virus in either kind of outbreak can, in rare instances, cause paralysis.

By Jennifer Scott, Rotary Club of Central Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia

Mongolia, a country caught between two giants – China and Russia, is a long, long way from Australia and I never planned to travel there. However, like many Rotary projects, it is through networking and circumstance that you find an opportunity to make a difference. Mine came as part of a vocational training team to Mongolia to conduct workshops to empower single fathers.

In 2017, I ran into Kathyrn Johnson, a fellow mediator, who had just returned from Mongolia where her brother was making a documentary. She had met Professor Namjil from Ulaanbaatar University, who told her how he had been asked for help by a group of 150 single fathers, many of them disabled or unemployed or both. The men were from Erdenet city, a mining town about 300 kilometers from Ulaanbaatar, and were lost in a culture where the very notion of a father raising their children alone was alien.

Professor Namjil explained how it was not uncommon in Mongolia for women to be better educated than the men due to their nomadic tradition. Boys were kept behind to assist with the seasonal movement of the herds while women could be sent to gain their education as a means of assisting the welfare of the family. In recent years this was causing a societal problem. The men felt their traditional skills of horsemanship and herding were no longer useful in an urban setting, causing a feeling of disempowerment which led to depression, alcohol abuse and domestic violence, particularly in the mining towns with high unemployment.

by Brad Webber

Seven Rotary clubs and two Rotaract clubs in the southern Nigerian state of Delta took steps in October 2021 to heighten vigilance in a country certified polio-free the year before. The Polio Walk, organized by the Rotary Club of Effurun, attracted nearly 100 participants.

The walkers — many clad in red, blue, yellow, and purple End Polio Now T-shirts — strolled, socialized, beat drums, and tooted horns along a roughly 2-mile route, says Michael Enehizena, past president of the Effurun club. “It was a huge success as flyers and car stickers were given out and placed on cars,” Enehizena adds. 

The Rotary clubs of Effurun City Centre, Effurun Gateway, Effurun GRA, Ekpan, Osubi, and Ovwian, as well as the Rotaract clubs of Effurun and Petroleum Training Institute (PTI), united for the event.