By 1979, thanks to development of a vaccine by Dr. Jonas Salk in the 1950s, polio was a thing of the past in the United States.
That wasn’t true elsewhere, until starting in 1985 when Rotary International met in Kansas City and came away with an ambitious plan to eradicate the dreaded childhood disease worldwide.
Iolan Rotarian Richard Chase, then president of the local club, was there, along with Clyde Toland and several others. They listened to details of Polio 2005, the ambitious program to immunize children around the world against polio with an oral vaccine developed…
Polio eradication nearly done
