All day
October 24, 2026
World Polio Day was established by Rotary International over a decade ago to commemorate the birth of Jonas Salk, who led the first team to develop a vaccine against poliomyelitis. Use of this inactivated poliovirus vaccine and subsequent widespread use of the oral poliovirus, developed by Albert Sabin, led to the establishment of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI)
Polio is a crippling and potentially fatal infectious disease. There is no cure, but there are safe and effective vaccines. Polio can be prevented through immunization. Polio vaccine, given multiple times, almost always protects a child for life. The strategy to eradicate polio is therefore based on preventing infection by immunizing every child until transmission stops and the world is polio-free.
Rotary has been working to eradicate polio for more than 30 years, and we’ve made incredible progress in the fight to rid the world of it forever. As a founding partner of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, we've helped to reduced polio cases by more than 99.9 percent.
It’s crucial to eliminate polio from the last three countries where it remains endemic and to keep other countries polio-free.