Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to stand here and speak on the private member's motion brought by the member for Higgins. I'd also like to commend the contribution from the member for Wills. I acknowledge the important and ongoing work led by the World Health Organization to eradicate polio worldwide. There is not only that organisation; there are many other organisations as well. Polio is a fatal infectious disease and there is no cure, but, with a safe and effective vaccine, it can be prevented. For the eradication of polio, the strategy is to provide immunisation to almost every child until transmission stops and to make the world polio free. I note the Australian government is firmly committed to the global eradication of wild poliovirus and the circulating vaccine-derived polio virus. The global initiatives to eradicate polio have been very successful. Since 1988, polio cases have reduced by some 99.9 per cent. For more than three years, the only countries with wild poliovirus are Afghanistan and Pakistan. But the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted on the polio program and the immunisation efforts have slowed.

Importantly, I want to focus a little bit on the importance of the eradication of polio, and, through that, acknowledge the efforts of Rotary International. Specifically, I want to take the opportunity to mention the Rotary Clubs of Beenleigh, Loganholme and Logan for their efforts. As we know, Rotary is an international organisation that takes on some of the world's toughest challenges. As a founding partner of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, Rotary has been working to eradicate polio for more than 35 years. Rotary's PolioPlus program was the first initiative to tackle global polio eradication by vaccinating children on a massive scale. Since their first project in 1979, vaccinating children in the Philippines, Rotary and their partners have helped immunise more than 2.5 billion children against polio in 122 countries. The program is one of their longest-standing and most significant efforts to eradicate polio. They focus on advocacy, fundraising, volunteer recruitment and awareness building.

World Polio Day, held on 24 October, is one of Rotary's initiatives to draw attention to polio. Every year the members of Beenleigh, Loganholme and Logan Rotary clubs raise funds and awareness to end polio. Many members have joined the End Polio Walk to support the continued campaign to rid the world of this disease. Rotary International established World Polio Day over a decade ago to commemorate the birth of Jonas Salk, who led the first team to the develop the vaccine against polio. The use of the inactivated vaccine for polio virus and the subsequent widespread use of the oral polio virus vaccine was developed by Albert Sabin, which led to the establishment of the initiative in 1988 with Rotary and its founding partners.

There were 350,000 cases of polio in 125 countries every year. Today, thanks to the work of Rotary and the members of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, nearly 19 million people who would have otherwise been paralysed are walking, and more than 1.5 million people who would have died are alive today. The infrastructure that Rotary helped build to end polio is also being used to treat and prevent other diseases, including COVID-19. With more than one million Rotary members being part of the program, they have contributed more than $2.1 billion and countless volunteer hours to protect 2.5 billion children in 122 countries from this disease.

This government's commitment to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative is also to be noted, with $69 million of funding from the Morrison government towards the Global Polio Eradication Initiative supporting the eradication of polio and managing the risk of polio re-emerging.

I want to thank everyone at the Loganholme, Beenleigh, and Logan Rotary clubs for the enormous amount of work they are doing each and every day to contribute to the eradication of polio globally. To everybody involved in this very worthwhile project: thank you for your efforts and I wish you continued success in the future.

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