Disease Prevention and Treatment

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The Rotary theme for December is Disease Prevention and Treatment Month.  And Rotary International is seriously committed to those two goals. We have been fighting Polio Eradication since 1988, and we will not give up until we are in a Polio-free world. 

Rotary also acknowledges that diseases cost to fight and families struggle to cover treatment costs in many parts of the world. In fact, 400 million people in the world can’t afford or don’t have access to basic health care. Below is a short, one-minute video that you can use to help further Rotary’s efforts to fight disease. 

How does Rotary make help happen? We educate and equip communities to stop the spread of life-threatening diseases. Rotary members have hundreds of health projects underway around the world at any given time.  Clubs around the world tap into the strength and resources of The Rotary Foundation to multiply the funds they can raise to be used to help mothers and their families, build clean water wells, and provide education for healthier lifestyles.

Another way that local Rotarians help is through Rotaplast. Rotaplast International is a non-profit, humanitarian organization founded in 1992 as a world community service project of the Rotary Club in San Francisco. Its outreach serves over twenty-six nations in Asia, Africa, South and Central America and Eastern Europe. The missions are requested by Rotary clubs in nations where free medical help is not available from the government or private organizations.

People get safe drinking water from a filtration facility in Karachi, Pakistan installed through a decades-long partnership between Rotary clubs and the government.

A health worker vaccinates a child at Urban Primary Health Centre., Gurugram, India.

A health worker participates in a door-to-door polio immunization campaign Internally Displaced Persons camp in Nigeria.

A resident of Kaduna, Nigeria installs a mosquito net in her room donated by Rotary.   

From a Rotaplast mission in Columbia, Manuel is an energetic 7- month- old boy with cleft pallet.

The next morning there is hardly a trace of the cleft and the happy family is ready to head home.

Rotary Southeastern PA District 7450 has participated in several two-week trips in other countries to do cleft palate and cleft lip surgeries.  If you would like to know more about these trips, email Paul Quintavalla, District Rotaplast Chair using  rotarian.paul@outlook.com 

This article was written by Edward Olsavicky, of the West Goshen Rotary Club