With the recent announcement that the entire continent of Africa has been declared free of wild poliovirus, we have met a major milestone in the battle to remove the threat of this terrible crippling disease from the planet Earth. But it's much more than polio - that's why we call it PolioPlus.
Since this March, the worldwide team working on polio has been repurposed to work instead on COVID-19. The teamwork on the ground — with its contact-tracing, relationships with hospitals and communities, laboratories, and surveillance 
procedures — has been able to help coordinate the effort to control the spread of COVID-19 in countries where the effects would have been devastating without this support.
Brookline Rotarian Joyce Graff has spoken with Michael McGovern (shown right), chair of Rotary International's PolioPlus Program, to learn more about the “Plus” in PolioPlus. That includes infrastructure, mechanisms, and teams to combat other biological threats as they occur — HIV, Ebola, and now COVID-19. To watch the 29-minute presentation and/or read the interview transcript, click here.
To lean more about this essential PolioPlus effort - and how you can help, click here.
