Annual Subscriptions - Please Pay
The Club has now received the half yearly dues account from Rotary International which has to be paid before the end of this month so any members who have not yet paid their annual subscriptions ($200.00 for the workers and $190.00 for the worked out) are asked to do so as soon as possible so our Club's funds are not stretched.
You can pay your annual Club dues in cash, by cheque or by the miracle of the internet with a direct credit to the Club account.
Your Club Tasks for the New Rotary Year
President Elect Andrew has circulated the Committees and Roles list for the 2015-16 Rotary year. Let's join in making this a special year in our Club.
Members Snapshots
Sue explained how Member Snapshots work and our first Snappy Snapshotter was Past President Graham Thomson whose Wonderful World of Water started salty as a 4 year old afore the mast.
This (and perhaps being a fan of Fanning) inspired Roger to tell us of his shark stories in which on one occasion he struck and concussed a large piece of flake.
On another occasion, Roger was at the beach with a Rotary Exchange student and thought he saw a shark….but it turned out to be a Finn.
The Health Report
Stan Deans is keeping the medicos busy with his bits and pieces and his physiotherapist says that he needs to keep his jaw moving so its either lots of chewing or lots of chatting so give Stan a call to keep his mind off the Minties.
Eddification - Nigeria on the brink of becoming polio-free.
Nigeria has gone almost one year — longer than ever before — without a case of wild poliovirus. The last case was reported on 24 July 2014 in Kano state. Once the gateway to polio in Africa, Nigeria is paving the way to eradicating the disease on the continent.
But reaching the milestone is only one step on the final road to ending polio and it is too soon to celebrate victory. Until polio is eliminated everywhere, it can return to Nigeria and the rest of Africa. Less than a decade ago, in 2006, polio paralyzed 1,000 people in Nigeria.
For the African region to be certified polio-free, including Nigeria, there must be no polio cases for two more years. To do this, all children in Nigeria and throughout Africa — including those in hard-to-reach and underserved areas — must continue to be protected against the disease.
“The ultimate goal is to ensure that the routine immunization infrastructure is established to increase and sustain the level of herd immunity” [protection for people who are not immune that occurs when a large percentage of the population has been vaccinated], says Tunji Funsho, chair of the Nigeria PolioPlus Committee. This will enable children to “continue to be immunized on schedule and protected from the virus even after the cessation of IPDs [Immunization Plus Days].”
Once all surveillance data is processed, Nigeria will be poised to be taken off the list of polio-endemic countries by the World Health Organization (WHO) in September. That achievement would leave only two polio-endemic countries: Pakistan and Afghanistan. In 2014, Pakistan accounted for 85 percent of the world’s polio cases. As of 17 June, polio cases in Pakistan had decreased by nearly 70 percent. “With Rotary, we made tremendous progress last year,” said Hamid Jafari, WHO’s Director for Global Polio Eradication and Research, speaking to attendees at the Rotary International Convention in São Paulo, Brazil, in June. “We must keep going to end polio. If the world’s commitment to polio eradication remains strong, we will soon see a polio-free world.”
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