MVR's Carl Good Continues Polio Project

Today we visited the WHO polio headquarters in Delhi and heard a presentation from the head of the program. Then we went to the airport and flew to Dhaka Bangladesh. They said that we had to be at the airport 3 hours before the flight and they were not kidding. The process took a long time. The baggage limitation was less on this flight than the international flight so we had to pay ~$350 in excess baggage fees. But we are now in a hotel in Dhaka and tomorrow will go to the homes of Rotary members who will host us for the rest of our stay in Bangladesh.

The trip from the airport was similar to that in Delhi with incredible traffic and many beggars who would attack our bus when we were caught at a light or stopped by traffic. However, here many we selling popcorn. I didn't know that it was so popular here. Many of the buses and taxes run on compressed natural gas as in Delhi to reduce pollution.

Flying in it was amazing that there was so much water considering that we are about 200km from the shore. This is certainly a wet country.


During each immunization effort 176 million children are immunized in 3-4 days
200 million houses visited
1.1 million house to house teams
2.7 million vaccinators deployed
155,00 supervisors deployed
800,000 booths set up

This is indeed a massive effort that is done several times a year, partially because of the high birth rate in the effected areas which are primarily in the north of the country. The country of India is now bearing about 70 % of the cost which was not the case in the past.
since the program started the incidence of polio has been reduced 99% but it still exists.

Rotary has contributed over 633 million dollars to the world wide effort over the years not to mention the in country and visiting Rotary volunteers that have participated in the program at their own expense.

The Gates matching grant of 100 million is large but not as large as what has already been contributed by Rotary members.

Carl Good Meets Polio Patients In Bangladesh

Latest post from Carl Good's blog.....pictured is Carl with some heart repair patients. Carl is from the Merrimack Valley Rotary Club.

Hi all,

Today we started out with an orientation meeting in the hotel lobby with more cautions with regard to the immunization process and our own intestinal health. While I am optimistic about the immunizations, my intestinal health may be another matter. We were told to bring our own toilet paper as well as avoiding anything that is not bottles or is steaming hot. Tomorrow we start by visiting the World Health Organization headquarters in Delhi and then fly to Dhaka. Tomorrow night will be in a hotel but from then on we will be staying at the home of a Rotary member in Bangladesh. There will be 2.4 million immunizations using the oral Sabin vaccine in this effort with the participation of 4,000 local Rotary members from 52 clubs. Our group will be doing some of the immunizations which require us to get the drops into the child's mouth.After our orientation meeting this morning we were bussed to the Escorts Heart Institute that has Rotary support and met with doctors and patients. For children the most common operation is closing a hole between the two sides of the heart which costs about $1,600. A man from the Netherlands was there who funds one operation a month from his own funds. Rotary provides support through the "Gift of Life" project. It is amazing how many Rotary clubs there are in India and Bangladesh and how active they are in this and the polio immunization program.In the afternoon we went to St. Stephens Hospital, the oldest in India, and visited the polio ward, talks to patients and doctors. It is heart wrenching to see these deformed children knowing that the disease is preventable. The hospital performs surgery to correct some of the deformity and provides braces and training for dealing with the disease. Again, Rotary provides support and most of the costs are not borne by the patients many of whom cannot afford the trip to Delhi for treatment. The program is being extended to outlying hospitals. In Bangladesh polio has been eradicated but has come back due to transmission from Nigeria through Pakistan and India. I suppose that the organizers scheduled this hospital visit so that we could see what happens if immunizations are not carried out. An interesting tidbit is that many children have chronic diarrhea which since the vaccine contains live virus and sanitation is poor, the immunized can actually provide immunizations to those they come in contact with that have not been officially immunized.

MVR' Carl Good Arrives In India

Below is Carl Good's, Merrimack Valley Rotary, first posting from his trip to Bangladesh. Carl is in India as of December 4. The report below is from his Blog.

After much snow, wind, earlier flight and harry landing in Newark, part of the group assembled for the flight to Delhi. Others are coming from Canada and Europe on separate flights. The guy next to me on the Boeing 777 flight to India was a native who is living in Albany NY for his children's education and returns to his home in Delhi three times a year. Soon he will go back for good.The 14 hr flight was pleasant as was the bus to the hotel. We all got wreaths of real marigolds. However, Delhi has a significant pollution problem with odder and haze. Supposedly it is much better than before. Tomorrow we have an orientation, WHO meeting and a hospital visit. The plan is to fly to Bangladesh the day after tomorrow to start work on vaccinations. All the best

MVR's Carl Good Heads To Bangladesh

Best of luck to Merrimack Valley Rotary member Carl Good, who is leaving with 17 Rotarians from the United States, Canada and Europe to Bangladesh on December 3. He will be in Bangladesh for two weeks immunizing for polio in that area. This project is funded by each individual and they will be staying with other Rotarians in the area to help defray costs.
Eradicatin of Polio is one of Rotary International's major projects and Bangladesh is one of the last area's in the world were cases of polio still exist.
The four countries including Nigeria, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, are still considered polio-endemic.
Two hundred and ten countries, territories and areas are now polio-free (including China), and 134 of these, which contain half the world’s population, have been certified polio-free by independent commissions.
Our hopes and prayers are with Carl and the other Rotarians who are taking on this important mission.
May it be a tremendous success!

Help The Environment & The Community!

The Merrimack Valley Rotary Club is involved in an ink cartridge recycling program.

The program both helps the environment and local charities. It helps the environment because ink cartridges contaminate the ground and take decades to decay. It helps local charities because each cartridge the Rotary recycles, the Club earns funds which it will give back to local charities.

How can you help? Instead of throwing away empty cartridges from your printer, fax machine and desktop copier, send them or save them for The Merrimack Valley Rotary. We’ll take it from there. We will recycle the cartridges through the FundingFactory to earn funds for the community.

Last year alone, more than 300 million cartridges were thrown away. We’re alleviating the volume of waste that goes into landfills, while doing something positive for the community.

If you have any questions about this great opportunity, please feel free to call the Merrimack Valley Rotary at 978-446-9366 or e-mail us at mvrotary@gmail.com.

Another Success Story!!

The Merrimack Valley club hosted another wildley successful Antiques Appraisal night last Wednesday. Stuart Whitehurst of the popular "Antiques Roadshow" put on another fabulous performance keeping us entertained and educated for the entire evening. Many interesting articles were evaluated with one painting believed to have a value of up to $50,000. What a surprise this was for the owner.

We plan to have another show in the Spring. As usual, this event was a sell out. Keep an eye out for the next one. This is a big hit!!

A Little Reading

I had the eye-opening pleasure of attending the Rotary International Conference in Copenhagen and Malmo in June 2006. If you haven't attended an RI Conference, put in on your life list. Seeing the breadth of our interests and projects is breath-taking and mind-boggling. But I began to wonder: what makes a project work?

At a workshop at the conference, I heard a great deal of discussion about the successes and failures of projects, and about the desire not to have to reinvent the wheel when implementing them. Resources for avoiding reinvention are available, of course - the RI website reports success stories, for one.

But for broader background, I'd like to recommend some books - The End of Poverty, by Jeffrey Sachs, and The White Man's Burden, Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, by William Easterly. These two books will give you some some very different views, but both are great food for thought. I'd like to know of other titles any of you out there would like to recommend, and this is my modest contribution to what might be a useful book list.

Now we just need some time to read!