Polio Awareness

Happy Tuesday, Rotarians.

A small handful of you may have been disappointed with the lack of newsletter last week. I’m sorry I had to miss the meeting. Don’t you hate it when your job gets in the way of all of the other things you would rather be doing?

Need to Know

1. It’s pecan time again. Part of the shipment has arrived so there are bags of both halves and pieces available at MFA. Pecans will be $10.00 per bag of either halves or pieces. Amy Wilkerson has fliers and display boxes for anyone who needs them.
2. To expand the good works of the club, we would like to add at least one more fundraiser next year. Suggestions so far include a vehicle raffle, golf tournament and a color run/5K. If you have any other suggestions for a fundraiser for 2016, please contact Scott Jones.
3. On December 1^st, our club will have its annual meeting to elect officers for the next Rotary year. After that speakers are still TBD. If you know of a potential speaker, please let Scott Jones know.
4. Our next board meeting will be Monday, December 14^th at noon. It will be held at Southern Missouri Bank. All members are welcome.
5. December has five Tuesdays. As you know, we don’t have regular meetings on 5^th Tuesdays, but we do try to plan social events. If there is enough interest, Brian Drane will plan a club social event for December 29^th. Please contact Brian if you have any feedback.
6. Go ahead and put this on your calendar now: our 3^rd Annual Romance Raffle will be held on Saturday, February 13, 2016.
7. Go ahead and put this on your calendar now: the Marshfield Easter Egg Hunt will be held on Saturday, March 12, 2016, with a rain date of March 19^th.

Meeting Recap

Membership Chairperson Karen Stevens passed out surveys to members on desired speakers or speaker topics. Karen also reminded members to invite guests to club meetings.

Our speaker today was Dr. Ted Groshong, Rotary District 6080 chairperson for the Polio Committee, and faculty member of the University of Missouri’s Department of Child Health. Dr. Groshong gave a very informative presentation on polio, Rotary International’s top project. The District and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation match donations to the District’s polio project, so a $1.00 donation becomes $3.00 in the fight against polio. As our Polio Plus slogan states, we are “this close” to eradicating polio worldwide. There are only two countries that still have endemic polio – Afghanistan and Pakistan – and as of this month, there have only been 56 cases of endemic polio this year.

Polio is highly infectious. It is fecal/orally spread and the virus can survive on surfaces for several days at room temperature. There are several types of polio, including paralytic polio, which is more dangerous to adults than children, and bulbar polio, the most dangerous type of polio, which affects the respiratory system and has a 60% mortality rate.

In 1952, the United States had the worst polio epidemic in our country’s history. That is also the first year that Dr. Jonas Salk started testing his “killed virus” polio vaccine. All of the funding for Dr. Salk’s research came from the March of Dimes. Dr. Albert Sabin also developed a “live virus” oral vaccine shortly thereafter. Widespread polio vaccination began in the mid-1950s. Because one case per 6.2 million doses will get polio from the “live” vaccine, only a modified version of Salk’s “killed virus” is now used in the United States. The vaccines developed by Doctors Salk and Sabin dramatically reduced the polio cases within a few decades. Only lack of access to vaccines in remote, hostile and poverty-stricken areas is keeping us from completely eradicating polio worldwide.

Final Thoughts

“There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”

Jonas Salk (when asked who had the patent to the polio vaccine)

As we all know Thursday is Thanksgiving. The Thanksgiving celebration commonly celebrated as the “first” American Thanksgiving occurred in 1621 between the surviving Mayflower Pilgrims and the Wampanaog Tribe to celebrate the Pilgrim’s first successful harvest. The Pilgrims learned how to cultivate corn from Squanto, a Native American who spoke English because he had for a time been captured as a slave by an English sea captain. Squanto helped the Pilgrims survive the first winter in the new colony and also helped the Pilgrim’s develop the alliance with the Wampanaog. The celebration featured deer and fowl but no pie or other sweets since the Pilgrims would not have had the sugar for it. This celebration may not have actually been the first American Thanksgiving since there is some historical evidence that other European settlers held earlier “days of thanks” and Native Americans held harvest celebrations long before European settlers arrived. Harvest celebrations have occurred in cultures all over the world since ancient times.

Since 1621, individual colonies (later states), mostly in New England, celebrated Thanksgiving on different dates. The national holiday of Thanksgiving we now celebrate began in 1863 by proclamation of President Lincoln. For more on the history of the holiday, check out: http://www.history.com/topics/thanksgiving/history-of-thanksgiving. The full Lincoln Thanksgiving Proclamation (actually written by his Secretary of State William Seward) can be found here: http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/thanks.htm

Happy Thanksgiving!

https://youtu.be/MyLTknMEiR4

Marshfield Rotary Club: Raising the bar through leadership, giving and education.
Yours in Rotary Service,

Kristin Grace Krebs