Anderson County Commissioner and longtime Oak Ridger Jerry Creasey will talk about the history of polio in the United States, and his childhood experience with the polio epidemic of 1944 during a meeting today (Tuesday, May 21).
Creasey will be the featured speaker at Lunch with the League, which starts at noon at the Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church at 809 Oak Ridge Turnpike.
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New Oak Ridge Breakfast Rotary Club President Tony Lester, left, accepts the president’s gavel from outgoing President Kelly Callison. (Photo by ORBRC)
The Oak Ridge Breakfast Rotary Club president for the year 2015-2016 is Tony Lester, a press release said.
Lester has been a Rotarian since 1998 and has previously served as Foundation chair for ORBRC.
Having a close family member who has polio inspired Tony to become more involved in Rotary’s worldwide campaign to eradicate the disease.
He has also served on the boards of the Anderson County United Way, WDVX, and the Jubilee Community Arts. [Read more…]
‘We are this close to ending polio’
Rotary International, which includes some 1.3 million members in 33,000 clubs in more than 200 countries around the world, celebrated October 24 as World Polio Day.
Since 1985, Rotary has led the battle against polio, as worldwide cases plummeted from 350,000 per year to several hundred—a 99 percent reduction.
“This is a source of pride to Rotarians everywhere,” says District Governor Jerry Wear of Rotary District 6780, which includes East Tennessee. “In our relentless fundraising efforts and our participation in inoculation days around the world, Rotarians are committed to carrying this important mission to completion.”
Today, polio is endemic in only three countries—Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan. When India came off that list in 2012, it was an important step toward eradicating a human disease from the earth for only the second time in history. (The first disease so eradicated was smallpox.) [Read more…]
Brenda Thornburgh, left, president of Galbraith Laboratories Inc. and past President of Oak Ridge Breakfast Rotary Club, marks a child’s left pinkie with a purple marker during a polio eradication mission in India in 2012, indicating that the child has received the immunization. (Submitted photo).
Brenda Thornburgh, president of Galbraith Laboratories Inc. and past President of Oak Ridge Breakfast Rotary Club, will discuss the worldwide effort to eradicate polio during Lunch with the League on Tuesday.
The meeting starts at noon in the Social Hall of the Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church on Oak Ridge Turnpike.
For most Americans, paralytic polio is a disease of the past, a press release said. However, there has been a worldwide increase in the number of confirmed cases across the world in 2013, primarily in non-endemic countries such as Somalia, Kenya, and the Syrian Arab Republic. [Read more…]
