Baxterbear is a very helpful bear. Baxterbear is helping Rotary International’s Campaign to Eradicate Polio and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation $200m challenge. £4 from the sale of every Baxterbear goes to the campaign.

Total Raised by sales of Baxterbear.

Up to October 2009: £380.00

-->

Rotary - 'End Polio Now' Shop

baxterbear

Enlarge »

Own Baxterbear and makes a difference ! - £10

Baxterbear has that well loved feel. A ten inch soft bodied, positively huggable bear with a tartan patch on his right shoulder, a torn left ear and a shortbread recipe card (his favourite food!) tied to his left arm. Suitable for all ages. £4 from each sale goes to Rotary’s End Polio Now campaign. Suitable for all ages.

box of baxterbears

Enlarge »

Box of 36 Baxterbears - £216

Help our campaign by buying a whole box of Baxterbears that you can then sell in your club, or at fund raising events.

Sell them all at £10 each and raise £144 for Rotary’s End Polio Now campaign.

1. Shopping Cart

Rotary International’s Campaign to Eradicate Polio and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation $200m challenge

An amazing story to tell
Not long ago the world was paralyzed by the fear of polio. More than 125 countries were polio endemic and thousands of families watched in anguish as the disease killed or crippled 1000 people each day.

Polio mainly affects children under the age of five, invading the nervous system and often causing total paralysis in a matter of hours. There is no cure but it can be prevented through immunisation. In response to the suffering of polio, Rotary in the early 1980’s began planning for one of the most ambitious humanitarian
programmes ever undertaken by a private entity.

In 1985 Rotary International launched Polio Plus, a multi million dollar initiative to immunise all the world’s children against polio. Since then more than two billion children have received the oral polio vaccine. 5 million children who were destined to be polio victims are walking today and enjoying a better life because of this initiative.

The number of polio cases have fallen by 99% from 350,000 a year to 1313 in 2007 and Rotary have contributed more than $700 million US dollars and countless volunteer hours to the protection of more than 2 billion children in 122 countries.

Due to the work of Rotary International and its global partners, the World Health Organisation, Unicef and the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, we are on the threshold of eradicating the wild poliovirus – it now remains endemic in only 4 countries – Afghanistan, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan.

So impressed were they by the work of Rotary that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded Rotary, initially $US100m and then a further $US250m grant. In return Rotary International is committed to the challenge of raising $US200 million by 30th June 2012.

But we have a lot of work still to do.
Because polio has been wiped out in Great Britain and Ireland, many people believe it no longer exists but this virus knows no boundaries and can spread from an endemic country into polio free areas. As long as one case remains in the world, no child is safe from this deadly disease. Our biggest challenge in the world is financial - despite the huge sums already committed, more money is urgently needed to reach the children in the four remaining countries.

“If we all have the fortitude to see this effort through to the end, then we will eradicate polio.” - Bill Gates