Rotary International - Oscar nominated films accession polio awareness

A adolescent receives a dosage of polio vaccine during a accumulation immunization drive in India. (RI Images)Store this angel in big sizeThe Final Inch and Slumdog Millionaire appearance the challenges adverse the all-embracing polio abolishment accomplishment in India

EVANSTON, Ill. U.S.A. (Feb. 20, 2009) -- According to Rotary International, adroit Oscar-watchers are accepting a abbreviate advance in polio abolishment this year, acknowledgment to two nominated films that calm appearance the cachet of this paralyzing ache in India.

The Final Inch, nominated for an Academy Award in the best documentary abbreviate accountable category, chronicles the challenges bloom organizations and governments face during the final stages of polio eradication. The blur follows bloom workers as they immunize accouchement in cities and limited villages of India, answer how they affected cultural misunderstandings that accomplish some parents alert of the articulate polio vaccine. Several scenes appearance Rotary club volunteers administering vaccine to accouchement in Uttar Pradesh, India.

And while not acclamation polio directly, best account appointee Slumdog Millionaire graphically depicts the altitude that acquiesce the poliovirus to broadcast in India’s barrio -- including poor sanitation, attenuated water, and bottleneck -- and the generally atrocious measures accouchement crop to survive in such a acrid environment. The cine helped affect Sophia Hameed, a Miami top academy chief of Indian descent, to accompany a accumulation of 42 Rotary club volunteers who helped hook bags of Indian accouchement adjoin polio in aboriginal February. “There is a lot of absoluteness there that you see in the movie,” says Hameed, who alone vaccinated about 100 accouchement in the city-limits of Chandigarh in arctic India.

“The Final Inch shows us why it’s analytical to win the hearts and minds of the parents whose accouchement are at risk,” says Jonathan Majiyagbe, armchair of the Rotary Foundation, which oversees Rotary’s polio abolishment program. “And if you appearance Slumdog Millionaire with polio in mind, you will see how calmly the virus can advance from adolescent to adolescent in an ambiance of acute poverty. Taken together, these two films appearance us some of the cultural and concrete barriers we have to affected in adjustment to accomplish a polio-free world.”

The Academy Awards will be appear Feb. 22.

Polio abolishment has been Rotary’s top antecedence for added than 20 years. The all-embracing altruistic account alignment is a spearheading accomplice in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, alternating with the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and UNICEF.

Great advance has been made, and the accident of polio infection has plunged by added than 99 percent, from about 350,000 cases in 1988 to beneath than 2,000 in 2008. More than two billion accouchement accept been immunized in 122 countries, preventing 5 actor cases of aeroembolism and 250,000 pediatric deaths. Today, polio charcoal ancient to alone four countries: India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Afghanistan.

Rotary club associates common accept contributed added than $800 actor and amaranthine advance hours to the effort. Rotary is currently adopting $200 actor to bout $355 actor in claiming grants accustomed from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, all of it for polio eradication.

The money is bare to advice abutting a allotment gap that threatens to attenuate two decades of progress. To apprentice added about polio eradication, including how to participate in this celebrated effort, appointment www.rotary.org.

Rotary is an alignment of business and able leaders affiliated common to accommodate altruistic account and advice to body amicableness and accord in the world. It is comprised of 1.2 actor associates alive in over 32,000 clubs in added than 200 countries and bounded areas. Rotary associates admit association projects that abode abounding of today’s a lot of analytical issues, such as violence, AIDS, hunger, the ambiance and bloom care.

Rotary International
1560 Sherman Ave, Evanston, IL 60201, USA

Sandra Prüfer, Media Relations Europe/Africa
+ 1 847-866-3208, sandra.prufer@rotary.org