Disease Prevention and Treatment

We believe good health care is everyone’s right. 

Yet 400 million people in the world can’t afford or don’t have access to basic health care.

Disease results in misery, pain, and poverty for millions of people worldwide. 

That’s why treating and preventing disease is so important to us. We lead efforts both large and small. We set up temporary clinics, blood donation centers, and training facilities in underserved communities struggling with outbreaks and healthcare access. 

We design and build infrastructure that allows doctors, patients, and governments to work together.

Our members combat diseases like malaria, HIV/AIDS, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, and polio. 

Prevention is important, which is why we also focus on health education and bringing people routine hearing, vision, and dental care. 

The most significant example is the Rotary Foundation’s role in funding Rotary’s End Polio Now! polio eradication efforts. Rotary has been working to eradicate polio for more than 35 years. 

Our goal of ridding the world of this disease is closer than ever.

As a founding partner of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, we’ve reduced polio cases by 99.9% since our first project to vaccinate children in the Philippines in 1979.

Rotary members have contributed more than $2.1 billion and countless volunteer hours to protect nearly 3 billion children in 122 countries from this paralyzing disease. Rotary’s advocacy efforts have played a role in decisions by governments to contribute more than $10 billion to the effort.

Today, polio remains endemic only in Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

But it’s crucial to continue working to keep other countries polio-free. If all eradication efforts stopped today, within 10 years, polio could paralyze as many as 200,000 children each year.