Dear Fellow Rotarians, visitors and guests!
WELCOME TO OUR E-CLUB!
Thank you for stopping by our club meeting! We hope you will enjoy your visit.
Our E-Club banner is shown at left! Please send us a virtual copy of your club banner and we will send you a copy of our new club banner in exchange. We will also display your club banner proudly on our meeting website.
Although our E-club has Provisional status at this time, we hope you will find the content of our meeting enlightening and will give us the benefit of your opinion on the content.
June is Rotary Fellowships month!
Visiting Rotarians. Click this link to Apply for a Make-up. We will send you and your club secretary a make-up confirmation.
Active Members. Click for Attendance Record.
Happy Hour Hangout. We are adjusting the time of our Happy Hour
Hangout to Saturday mornings - early enough so that you can join before
your day gets away from you. We've now added a second option - Wednesday evening.
We
meet for a live chat and sometimes business discussion. If you are
interested in dropping by, please click the link below. Morning coffee
is on the house! (Your house, that is...) Hope to see you there!
Please note: Now, attending our HHH will earn you a make-up!
The links to the Happy Hour Hangouts are at the bottom of this meeting.
Interested in joining us? Click the link Membership Application and Information.
Our Provisional President, Kitty, would now like to welcome you to this week's meeting. Please listen in...
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ROTARY E-CLUB OF THE CARIBBEAN, 7020
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ABCs OF ROTARY (
Cliff Dochterman)
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Cliff Dochterman
RI President, 1992-93 |
International Conventions
Each May or June, Rotary International holds a worldwide convention "to stimulate, inspire and inform all Rotarians at an international level." The convention, which may not be held in the same country for more than two consecutive years, is the annual meeting to conduct the business of the association. The planning process usually begins about four or five years in advance.
The RI Board determines a general location and invites cities to make proposals. The conventions are truly international events which 20,000 or more Rotarians attend. All members should plan to participate in a Rotary International convention to discover the real internationality of Rotary. It is an experience you'll never forget.
Regional Conferences
From time to time, Rotarians may read the promotional literature announcing a regional conference to be held some place in the world. Such a conference is quite similar to the annual Rotary International convention, but generally smaller in attendance and serving Rotarians and guests in a region which is at a considerable distance from the site of the international convention.
The purpose of a regional conference is to develop and promote acquaintance, friendship and understanding among the attendees, as well as to provide a forum to discuss and exchange ideas about Rotary and international affairs related to the geographic areas involved.
Regional conferences usually attract two or three thousand individuals and because they are considered special events in the Rotary calendar, are not held on any regular schedule. The conferences are arranged periodically, according to the interest of the Rotary leaders in specific regions. Many of the operational tasks of the conferences are handled by the RI Secretariat.
Although there is no special effort to promote attendance by Rotarians outside of the region involved, members from all parts of the world are always welcome to attend. Attending a conference in another region is an enjoyable, rewarding and fascinating experience. They provide another facet to the international fellowship of Rotary.
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THE END OF POLIO
Source - http://www.theendofpolio.com
Lahore, April 28, 2013: Hands are waving excitedly as students gather at Al Meraj School in one of the poorest areas of Pakistan’s second largest city, Lahore.
“What is polio?” asks the teacher. “And who should be given the polio vaccine?”
“It’s a virus,” says one young student. “All children under five!” shouts another, before any of the other nearly 200 students can answer before her.
These children, aged as young as three and as old as 12 were part of an awareness session and quiz on polio and hygiene organized by the Communication Network (COMNet) for polio eradication, with the support of UNICEF Pakistan.
The targeted school is located in Abu Bakar Siddique Colony, Bund Road, in the jurisdiction of Union Council 84, which is one of the 29 UCs that have been declared high risk for polio. High risk districts are identified due to the presence of wild polio virus, poor sanitation, low routine immunization and other factors.
This school provides free education to nearly 300 children from the neighbourhood, a neighbourhood which lacks even basic health and sanitation services, has limited or no access to safe drinking and not even a single public health facility for a population of more than 30,000. A substantial number of the students belong to the Pashtu-speaking community, which is a priority population for polio eradication since 46 of the 58 children paralysed by polio in 2012 were Pashtuns.
Pakistan is one of only three polio endemic countries in the world. In 2011, the country reported 198 cases, the largest number in the world. But thanks to significant work and commitment by the Government and partners, the situation improved significantly in 2012 with only 58 cases.
The children living in Abu Bakar Siddique Colony are at risk of contracting the polio virus. These awareness sessions are held in schools to educate the children on the debilitating impacts of polio, to increase acceptance for polio vaccination and encourage students to maintain good hygiene to help protect them, explained Omer Feroze District Health and Communication Support Officer of COMNet.
Omer is one of over a thousand COMNet staff across Pakistan’s high risk districts for polio who help to ensure parents understand polio and the importance of vaccine. UNICEF Pakistan supports communication and awareness activities through COMNet across Pakistan to increase acceptance for polio vaccine, raise public demand and address refusals.
An awareness session on polio, hygiene and importance of hand-washing was organized for the teachers of the school, Feroze explained, to build their knowledge base and then share the same with the students and prepare them for the quiz competition.
On the day of the quiz, the children came prepared and the winners of the quiz were awarded colour books and pastels.
Lahore is a concern for the spread of the wild polio virus as its presence has been confirmed through sewage samples collected from various parts of city. The sustained presence of wild polio virus in sewage, poor sanitation facilities, a huge transit and mobile population, has kept Lahore on the list of cities at risk with polio virus spread. The communication and awareness activities with special focus on school children has played a vital role to ensure protection of children in Lahore, which saw its last polio case in 2011.
So far in 2013, five children are confirmed with polio. None have been reported in the Lahore area.
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A thank you to Brunei!
“I am here to say thank you to the Sultanate students. They have always been forthcoming and helpful to us. My teacher told me that our brothers in Brunei have contributed money to help children in Pakistan to cope with diseases like polio”, says Bilal, who according to the teacher is one of the brightest students in the class.
Bilal’s father is a blacksmith in local market.
During a three-hour activity, which was initially planned for one hour, the students jostled for candies, led pencils and erasers and had star-shaped stickers pasted on their faces. Some went wild while being photographed and nearly trampled over other children.
As some of the kids made a queue to get their share of gifts a child wrote down “Brunei” prominently on the blackboard.
When asked about being aware of the risks of Polio the child rightly replied: “Polio cripples child’s limbs if not given medicine regularly and the best time to give him medicine is when he is young”.
Sixth grader Bilal says his parents ‘never refused polio vaccination at any stage to any of my siblings’.
The owner of the school-cum-charity, a bearded man in his 90s, has special respect for the sultanate for being a Muslim state and its success against polio.
“I have deep respect for Brunei because of its role in spreading the message of cohesion among the Muslim nations”, says old but colourful Sufi Muhammad Tufail.
No polio case has been reported in Brunei since 1978.
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SPEAKER - Bruce Feiler
Agile programming -- for your family
Bruce Feiler has a radical idea: To deal with the stress of modern family life, go agile.
Inspired by agile software programming, Feiler introduces family practices which encourage flexibility, bottom-up idea flow, constant feedback and accountability. One surprising feature: Kids pick their own punishments.
Bruce Feiler is the author of "The Secrets of Happy Families," and the writer/presenter of the PBS miniseries "Walking the Bible."
Why you should listen to him:
Bruce Feiler is the author of nine books, including Walking the Bible, Abraham, and America’s Prophet. He is also the writer/presenter of the PBS miniseries Walking the Bible. His book
The Council of Dads tells the uplifting story of how friendship and community can help one survive life’s greatest challenges. Most recently Feiler published
The Secrets of Happy Families, in which he calls for a new approach to family dynamics, inspired by cutting-edge techniques gathered from experts in the disciplines of science, business, sports and the military.
Feiler’s early books involve immersing himself in different cultures and bringing other worlds vividly to life. These include
Learning to Bow, an account of the year he spent teaching in rural Japan;
Looking for Class, about life inside Oxford and Cambridge; and
Under the Big Top, which depicts the year he spent performing as a clown in the Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus.
Walking the Bible describes his perilous, 10,000-mile journey retracing the Five Books of Moses through the desert. The book was hailed as an “instant classic” by the Washington Postand “thoughtful, informed, and perceptive” by the New York Times.
Click this link to view the video.
Click your browser's BACK button to return to the meeting.
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THE WORLD'S GREATEST CRIPPLER - POLIO
The earliest recorded evidence of polio was carved in stone some 35 centuries ago on an Egyptian stele. It depicts a young man with a withered leg and a drop foot, leaning on a crutch. Paralysis of one or more limbs, with subsequent atrophy of the muscles, is a common result of poliomyelitis, an accute invectious disease caused by one of three types of poliovirus.
Poliovirus enters the body through the mouth. Close human contact, poor hygiene, and an environment in which food and water are contaminated by human feces carrying the irus are the most common avenues of poliovirus transmission. After incubation in the throat and intestines, the virus can enter the bloodstream. Unless blocked by sufficient antibodies, such as those provided by polio vaccine, the virus can invade the central nervous system, damaging or destroying those motor neurons in the spinal cord or brain stem whose function is to transmit signals to muscles of the body.
The result of such damage is sudden onset of paralysis, either of the arms, lets, or both, called acute flaccid (floppy) paralysis, or AFP. Other victims suffer paralysis of muscles that enable the functions of breathing, swallowing, and speaking, known as bulbar polio. Such victims frequently are encased from the neck down in an iron lung, a metal cylinder equipped with mechanical devices in which rhythmic alternations of air pressure force air in and out of the lungs. Many such victims regain the ability to breathe unaided, but some live for years cocooned in an iron lung or other types of artificial respirators. Historically, of every 10 people paralyzed by polio, roughly one will die, 2 to 3 will suffer permanent paralysis, and the remainder will recover normal functions.
For centuries, polio was an endemic disease. Under then-prevailing sanitation and hygienic conditions, most infants were exposed to and built immunity to the poliovirus while still protected by polio antibodies transmitted from their mothers. The polio epidemics that began late in the 1800s and mushroomed in the first half of the 20th Century were, ironically, exacerbated by improved sanitation, particularly the installation of clean water and sewage disposal systems in urban areas.
Under these improved hygiene conditions, substantial numbers of children grew to adulthood with no exposure, and thus no immunity, to the poliovirus. when the virus invaded such vulnerable populations, it swept in without warning and with terrifying speed. Fear gripped communities.
A young girl could one day be roller-skating and the next morning be racked with fever and intense pain and unable to move her legs. Schools and theaters, camps and swimming pools were shut down. Public gatherings were curtailed. Panicked parents sequestered kids at home, and some even stuffed rags in the crevices of windows and doors to hold the virus at bay. As late as 1952, almost 58,000 cases of polio were reported in the United States alone, part of the 600,000 or more cases estimated to have occurred worldwide that year.
The poliovirus is capriciously selective. Fewer than 1 per cent of those infected become paralyzed. Thus, for every apparent polio-infected person, there can be in close proximity 200 or more other infected people who unknowingly are carrying and spreading the virus. Mild and short-lived polio symptoms such as fever, malaise, drowsiness, nausea, vomiting, and sore throat can go unrecognized and are often ascribed to other illnesses. Thus, the poliovirus is a silent and stealthy crippler. It respects no boundaries. And whether circulating in a remote and primitive village, a region, or a mobile world society, the characteristics of the virus immensely complicate efforts to eradicate it.
Eradication has been hailed as the ultimate form of communicable-disease control, but all health experts agree that its achievement is far from easy. the possibility of eradicating any disease first emerged in 1796 when Edward Jenner, an English country physician, demonstrated that a mild infection from cowpox provided immunity against smallpox. This loathsome disease killed millions eery year and often blinded or disfigured survivors.
In the royal court of England, rare was the face that was not scarred by smallpox. Jenner observed that many milkmaids of Gloucestershire, howeer, had fair complexions; somehow, they had acquired immunity from smallpox. He then began his experiment to extract material from pustules on the udders of infected cows in order to vaccinate (derived from the Latin "vacca, "cow") his patients. Within four years, an estimated 100,000 people had been vaccinated by Jenner's method.
"It now becomes too manifest to admit of controversy," Jenner wrote, "that the annihilation of smallpox, the most dreadful scourge of the human species, must be the final result of this practice." Jenner's dream was destined to become reality more than 200 years later. A concerted smallpox-eradication program was launched by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1967. At the time, there were an estimated 10-15 million cases in 44 countries. Despite the enormity of the task, the nature of smallpox gave cause for optimism: the smallpox virus, like the poliovirus, has no known reservoir other than humans. An effective vaccine was available, and a strategy of mass immunization aided by intense surveillance and containment succeeded. In October 1979, after two years of intensive search for any remaining case, WHO confirmed the eradication of smallpox.
Although the smallpox program succeeded, attempts to eradicate other diseases have failed. Among these efforts was a malaria eradication program launched in 1955 by WHO. Its success hinged on the spraying of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, or DDT, an insecticide used in controlling mosquitoes, the vector for the disease. Nature decreed otherwise.
The mosquito developed resistance to DDT, and the campaign failed after an expenditure of some $2 billion by WHO and other international agencies. A program to eliminate yaws, a disease that causes deforming and incapacitating lesions can can be cured by a single injection of penicillin, succeeded in only a few of the 49 countries where it operated over a 20-year period. Yellow-fever eradication efforts succumbed to the discovery of a nonhuman reservoir in monkeys.
The need to thoroughly understand the natural history of the disease was just one of the lessons learned from past attempts at eradication. The strategy o eradicate polio drew heavily upon such lessons: Initiate surveillance systems early and use the information to guide strategy and tactics, gain commitments from all political levels, co-ordinate donor support, set specific target dates, and develop a vertical approach that both complements and strengthens sustainable primary health services.
The key to the eradication of the poliovirus, of course, was the development of an effective oral polio vaccine. It opened the door to Rotary's PolioPlus program because it enabled massive numbers of volunteers to administer the vaccine to children, each dose consisting of two drops of vaccine squeezed into the child's mouth.
Two polio vaccines are available, and both are effective against all three types of poliovirus. An inactivated (killed) injectable polio vaccine (IPV) was developed in 1955 by Dr. Jonas Salk. A few years later, Dr. Albert Sabin succeeded in developing a live attenuated (weakened) oral polio vaccine (OPV) in his laboratories in Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.A., where he was a member of the rotary Club of Cincinnati.
For purposes of eradication, oral polio vaccine became WHO's vaccine of choice. OPV does not have to be administered by trained health workers, requires no sterile needles or syringes, and at 10 cents or less a dose, is less than one-fifth of the cost of IPV. In addition to protecting the individual, the oral polio vaccine also limits the multiplication of the wild (naturally occurring) virus inside the intestines, thus reducing fecal excretion of the wild virus The shedding of polio vaccine virus in the stools of recently immunized children has a beneficial effect in poor sanitary environments in which the polio vaccine virus is spread to non-immunized children through the oral-fecal route. This passive, or secondary, form of immunization proved to be an important additional advantage of OPV. The downside of oral polio vaccine is its ability to cause paralysis in either the vaccinated child or a close contact. A study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (now known as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC) covering an 11-year period concluded that OPV produced one case of paralysis for every 2.5 million doses administered. For several polio-free countries, the risk of OPV-related paralysis was to become too high, and they switched to IPV or a combination of the two vaccines.
The existence of an effective vaccine for polio eradication and the disappearance of smallpox were persuasive factors driving a series of decisions and actions by Rotary's leadership that led to the formal establishment of the PolioPlus program in 1985. Few of these leaders realized the ramifications of the program on which they were about to embark. And few, if any, could dream that Rotary, a private-sector organization with no track record in the field of public health, would shortly become the private-sector leader in the greatest public health adventure in history.
What these leaders did share, however, was a dream of a polio-free world, a dream coupled with the faith that their fellow Rotarians would put their shoulders behind the wheel of Rotary's first worldwide service program.
Conquering Polio
Herbert A. Pigman
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A FILM ON POLIO - trailer
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SECOND SPEAKER - ANOTHER VIDEO - Featuring Past RI President Cliff Dochterman
(A must-see video!!)
In 2001, Past RI President Cliff Dochterman addressed a PETS assembly.
Click this link to view the video. It's well worth watching over and over.
Click your browser's BACK button to return to the meeting.
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BEST PRACTICES FOR EFFECTIVE CLUBS
These best practices include:
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Developing long-range goals that address the elements of an effective club
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Setting annual goals that support long-range goals
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Keeping all members involved and informed
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Communicating effectively with club members and district leaders
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Ensuring continuity in leadership from year to year
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Customizing the bylaws to reflect club operations
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Providing regular fellowship opportunities
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Actively involving all club members
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Offering regular, consistent training
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Assigning committees that support your club’s operational needs, including:
Club administration
Membership
Public relations
Service projects
The Rotary Foundation
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TO END OUR MEETING
To end our meeting, please recite aloud (on your honour!) the Rotary Four-Way Test of the things we think, say, and do
.
Felix Stubbs, who will be our District Governor in 2015-16, leads us.
1. Is it the TRUTH?
2. Is it FAIR to all concerned?
3. Will it BUILD GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
4. Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?
...and official close of meeting
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Thank you for stopping by our E-club meeting! We wish you well in the next week in all that you do for Rotary!
The meeting has now come to an end. Please do have a safe and happy week! If you have enjoyed our E-club meeting, please leave a comment below.
Rotary cheers!
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Visiting Rotarians. Click this link to Apply for a Make-up. We will send you and your club secretary a make-up confirmation.
Active Members. Click for Attendance Record.
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HAPPY HOUR HANGOUT - Saturday, June 15
Please join our Happy Hour Hangout for Saturday, June 15 at 9:00 a.m. Eastern/Atlantic Time
Click the link below just before the meeting time.
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/join/771002856
Use your microphone and speakers (VoIP) - a headset is recommended. Or, call in using your telephone.
Dial +1 (786) 358-5417
Access Code: 771-002-856
Audio PIN: Shown after joining the meeting
Meeting ID: 771-002-856
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HAPPY HOUR HANGOUT - Wednesday, June 19
Please join our Happy Hour Hangout on Wednesday, June 19 15 7:00 p.m. Eastern/Atlantic Time
Click the link below just before the meeting time.
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/join/284706561
Use your microphone and speakers (VoIP) - a headset is recommended. Or, call in using your telephone.
Dial +1 (213) 493-0601
Access Code: 284-706-561
Audio PIN: Shown after joining the meeting
Meeting ID: 284-706-561
