Diahann Claghorn

It’s World Immunization Week, and this is the final part of the three-part series “A History of Immunization.” The Rotary Club of Downtown Lock Haven has been happy to share this information with Express readers.

WORKING ACROSS THE GLOBE

In 1985, Rotary International created an immunization milestone. It started the PolioPlus program that year, kick-starting the Global Polio Initiative to eradicate the disease around the world. The program has since grown to include the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO), The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.

Today, new cases from the wild poliovirus have been reported in only two countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan. It has been a long fight to get this far, partly because polio is hard to stop, harder than smallpox proved to be.

Smallpox was eradicated in 1980, in a global effort that took only 14 years. Smallpox vaccination programs in the U.S. ended even before that, in 1972.

In 2002, however, President George W. Bush had a special smallpox inoclation program. He had 500,000 military personnel and 10 million civilian health care and emergency workers inoculated against the disease in the event of biological warfare with Iraq.

A NEW AND BETTER WAY

In 2020, the COVID-19 virus hit the United States. Researchers came up with vaccines made from messenger RNA, called mRNA. The vaccines use a snippet of genetic material instead of killed or weakened viruses.

This mRNA type of vaccine has been studied and used in medical trials for other diseases since the 1990s. It cannot interact with a person’s DNA, and it is thought to be safer than the traditional method of using live viruses.

Experts predict that this new method will change the course of vaccinations forever.

The Downtown Lock Haven Rotary hopes that readers have found this “History of Immunization” useful. The club meets at the Poorman Gallery (Jaycee Hall) at 352 E. Water St., Lock Haven, every Tuesday at 5:15 p.m. If you are interested in becoming a member or want to check out what Rotary is, come to a meeting. The club does many service projects to help the community, incuding the Little Red Libraries, Flags of Honor, and Angel Lights, to name a few. If you’d like to make a donation to any of these worthwhile projects, the club’s mailing address is P.O. Box 634, Lock Haven, PA 17745.

Look for the club at the Wine In The Wilds event today from 2 to 6 p.m. at the Clinton County Fairgrounds, where Rotarians will sell snacks to benefit polio prevention.

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Diahann G. Claghorn, a retired educator, is Rotary Area Governor and a member of the Rotary Club of Downtown Lock Haven. For more information, find the club on Facebook or visit endpolio.org.