[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 175 (Monday, December 8, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2476-E2477]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          IN HONOR OF SERVICE

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                        Monday, December 8, 2003

  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to bring attention to the 
hard work of some of our nation's oldest service organizations to 
improve global health. As described in a December 7, 2003 Washington 
Post article titled ``Service Clubs Living Up to Mission,'' Rotary 
International, Lions Club International and Kiwanis International have 
each conunitted themselves to bettering the quality of life for people 
around the world.
  I represent the city of Chicago where Rotary International, our 
oldest service organization, was founded and Evanston where it is 
currently headquartered. The organization, in the early 1980s, made a 
commitment to eradicate polio and immunize children against infectious 
diseases. Rotarians have exceeded all expectations. Through the years, 
Rotary International has given $500 million to the polio-eradication 
effort and has sent thousands of volunteers abroad to work on the 
campaign. Partly based on the strength and success of Rotary 
International's campaign, the World Health Organization announced its 
intent to eradicate polio worldwide. I commend the commitment that 
Rotary International and its members continue to make to improving 
world health.
  Lions Club International, which was also founded in Chicago, has 
spent the last decade working to reduce blindness worldwide. Over the 
last decade, this organization has spent $148 million on sight-
preservation projects in 79 countries; it has funded more than 550 
grants in 78 countries targeting the main causes of blindness.
  Rotary International and Lions Club International paved the way for 
Kiwanis International's decision in 1991 to coordinate an organization-
wide campaign to reduce the amount of iodine deficiency, which causes 
developmental delays, worldwide. The organization has pledged to raise 
$75 million dollars towards the effort, and has already delivered $57 
million.
  Rotary International, Lions Club International and The Kiwanis have 
demonstrated that we have the ability to make real change in the lives 
of people around the world. While I look forward to supporting the 
efforts of these amazing service organizations, I hope that Congress 
and the Administration will also increase efforts to meet those goals. 
Mr. Speaker, I would like to commit the article from the Washington 
Post into the Record, and ask my fellow colleagues to take a moment to 
read it.

                [From the Washington Post, Dec. 7, 2003]

                   Service Clubs Living Up to Mission


    Rotary, Lions and Kiwanis at Front of Global War Against Disease

                            (By David Brown)

       Lunch is over, and the Rotary Club of Washington, D.C., is 
     taking coffee when Susan O'Neal starts her slide presentation 
     about the trip she and 65 other Rotarians took to India, 
     where they helped hand out oral polio vaccine to ragtag 
     children in a New Delhi slum.
       She explains that the vaccine, taken in two drops of fluid, 
     grows in the intestine and is excreted by the body for a few 
     weeks while immunity builds up. She then clicks on a slide of 
     an open sewer.
       ``You can see how it's rather easy for people to get fecal 
     microbes on their hands,'' O'Neal says. ``In fact, even 
     though only 93 percent of children on average get vaccinated 
     in a campaign, the other 7 percent get immunized through the 
     feces in the environment.''
       A groan briefly mixes with the tinkling of glassware as the 
     Rotarians settle in for the latest dispatch from their 
     organization's 15-year campaign to eradicate polio, the 
     leading cause of childhood paralysis.
       This scene at the Hotel Washington recently is not one that 
     George F. Babbitt, the title character of Sinclair Lewis's 
     1922 novel, would easily recognize. A small-minded resident 
     of a fictional American city, Babbitt belonged to a Rotary-
     like organization called the Boosters Club. Lewis lampooned 
     it as little more than institutionalized selfishness, and his 
     unflattering picture still lingers in the American psyche.
       That may be the reason so few people know that the heirs of 
     Babbitt's Boosters--not only in Rotary but also in two other 
     large clubs like it--are now major players in the global 
     fight against disease. They are engaged in arduous and 
     thankless campaigns against ailments that have largely 
     disappeared from the places where their members live.
       Since 1988, Rotary International has contributed $500 
     million and sent thousands of volunteers to work on the polio 
     campaign. The club is second only to the U.S. government in 
     the amount of money it has poured into the effort to 
     eradicate a human disease for only the second time in 
     history.
       In 1994, Kiwanis International adopted as its cause the 
     elimination of iodine deficiency, the biggest cause of 
     preventable mental retardation in the world. Since then, the 
     club has provided more than $50 million to help ensure that 
     all salt used in food contains iodine.
       Lions Clubs International, once famous for collecting and 
     recycling used eyeglasses, spent $148 million over the past 
     decade on sight-preservation projects in 79 countries. It 
     plays an important role in a river-blindness campaign in 
     Africa, has trained 14,000 ophthalmic workers in India and 
     helped pay for 2.1 million cataract operations in 104 rural 
     counties in China, where last year it became the only Western 
     ``service club'' allowed to establish chapters.
       The contributions of these clubs, however, go well beyond 
     money. Over the past decade they have essentially created a 
     new species of nongovernmental organization.
       Unlike many medical charities in the developing world, 
     these are not small cadres of overworked, self-sacrificing 
     idealists. Instead, they are vast, permanent networks of well 
     connected people willing to put in small amounts of time--
     often in the form of lobbying and consciousness-raising--
     against a few targeted diseases.
       ``Their contribution goes way beyond pretty important. I 
     believe that eradication of polio would not have been 
     feasible without the participation of Rotary International,'' 
     said R. Bruce Aylward, a Canadian physician who is the World 
     Health Organization's coordinator for the Global Polio 
     Eradication Initiative.
       ``Kiwanis is signed up indefinitely, not for donating money 
     but for raising their voice if they see any backsliding,'' 
     said Frits van der Haar, a Dutch nutritionist who heads the 
     Network for Sustained Elimination of Iodine Deficiency. 
     ``Outsiders like Kiwanis are the watchdogs. They see that the 
     work is done well and continues to get done.''
       In the river-blindness campaign, Merck & Co. provides the 
     drug ivermectin and Lions Clubs International pays to train 
     African villagers to dispense it. The ``barefoot doctor'' 
     strategy that has evolved from the program may become a model 
     for other medical programs in places with few health 
     professionals, said Moses Katabarwa, a Ugandan epidemiologist 
     and anthropologist.
       ``The Lions, they have triggered off a process in which 
     there is no reverse,'' said Katabarwa, who recently moved to 
     the United States to work on river blindness with the Carter 
     Center in Atlanta.
       The three clubs came to their work independently, tracing 
     similar paths from their origins as social organizations for 
     midwestern businessmen.
       Rotary, the oldest, was founded in Chicago in 1905. Kiwanis 
     (whose name is a shortened form of an Indian phrase meaning 
     ``we trade'') began in Detroit in 1915. The first Lions Club 
     formed in Chicago two years later.
       All made charitable works in their communities part of 
     their mission. The Lions chose blindness prevention as a 
     theme in 1925 when 45-year-old Helen Keller challenged them 
     to become ``knights of the blind in this crusade against 
     darkness.'' All eventually opened clubs on other continents.
       In the early 1980s, several Rotary leaders proposed 
     beginning an organization-wide project separate from local 
     efforts. ``This was contrary to the beginnings of Rotary and 
     was also contrary to the feelings of a lot of senior 
     Rotarians,'' recalled William T. Sergeant, who at age 84 
     heads Rotary's polio activities. But the idea took hold.
       At the suggestion of Albert Sabin, inventor of the oral 
     polio vaccine, Rotary chose as its goal universal 
     immunization of children

[[Page E2477]]

     against polio and several other infectious diseases. In 1986, 
     it decided to support the effort through 2005, the club's 
     centennial year. It did not envisage eradicating polio.
       A two-year campaign brought in more than twice as much 
     money as expected--$247 million, not $120 million. Partly on 
     the strength of that support, the World Health Organization 
     in 1988 announced its intent to rid the world of polio. A 
     WHO-led effort had previously eradicated smallpox in a 
     campaign lasting from 1966 to 1980.
       ``A lot of people have very ambitious ideas, but almost 
     nobody has the funding to kickstart a global initiative,'' 
     Aylward said. ``Rotary was the Gates Foundation of 1988.''
       But eradication has proved more difficult than anyone 
     anticipated. The target date was originally 2000; it is now 
     2005. The extra time required more money. Earlier this year, 
     Rotary completed a second fundraising campaign, which raised 
     $111 million--again more than the target, which was $80 
     million. The club's contributions. including interest, now 
     total more than $500 million.
       Lions Clubs International, the world's largest service 
     club, decided to reorient much of its sight-saving efforts 
     after it held a symposium with experts in blindness 
     prevention in Singapore in 1989.
       ``We were astounded to hear that blindness was increasing, 
     particularly in the developing world,'' said Brian Stevenson, 
     a provincial judge in Alberta who had just finished a term as 
     Lions president. ``They told us there were 40 million blind 
     people in the world, and 32 million of the cases were or had 
     been treatable. So it gave us a lot of focus.''
       Lions set a goal of $130 million but raised $147 million 
     for its SightFirst program. The organization has funded more 
     than 550 grants in 78 countries targeting the main causes of 
     blindness.
       Kiwanis's entry into the global health arena was due in 
     part to the example of the two other clubs.
       In 1991, William Foege, former head of the Centers for 
     Disease Control and Prevention, asked the Kiwanis president, 
     a physician named Wil Blechman, what the club was doing for 
     the world's children. Foege cited Rotary's polio work and 
     Lions' just-created SightFirst. While Kiwanis had urged local 
     clubs to have a charitable activity aimed at children younger 
     than 5, there was no organization-wide project.
       ``I will bring this to the attention of our board, because 
     I don't know at the moment,'' Blechman recalled answering 
     sheepishly.
       The board discussed the idea and ultimately surveyed its 
     membership, which favored a global project 2 to 1. UNICEF 
     suggested a focus on iodine deficiency.
       Iodine is an essential part of thyroid hormone, which in 
     turn is essential to brain development. In places where diets 
     contain insufficient iodine, generally because the soil 
     contains little and there is no seafood, the intelligence of 
     the entire population is shifted downward. In 1990, only 20 
     percent of the world's households consumed salt treated with 
     enough iodine to prevent deficiency.
       UNICEF estimated the problem could be eliminated worldwide 
     in five years for $50 million to $75 million. Kiwanis took 
     the challenge because it was important, concrete and 
     ``something we thought we could handle,'' Blechman said.
       The organization pledged to raise $75 million and has 
     already contributed $57 million. The money pays for 
     iodization equipment for salt manufacturers and campaigns on 
     the importance of iodized salt.
       Occasionally, members of service clubs do the work 
     themselves. Thousands of Rotarians, both local and foreign 
     volunteers, have participated in national immunization days 
     when vaccine is given to millions of children over a few 
     days.
       Dave Groner, a 60-year-old funeral director in Dowagiac, 
     Mich., has led four groups of Rotarians to India and one to 
     Nigeria. Next month, he will take 14 people, 10 of them 
     nurses, to Niger. They will all pay their own way--about 
     $3,000 each. ``We've never been asked to not work or to get 
     lost,'' he said.
       Occasionally, club members play a role nobody else can. 
     Angola has a single Rotary Club, 32 people who meet in the 
     capital, Luanda. They are led by Sylvia Nagy, who with her 
     husband owns a foundry. In 1997, a 25-year civil war, which 
     ended last year with the death of rebel leader Jonas Savimbi, 
     was underway. There had not been a vaccination campaign in 
     the rebel-held half of the country in years.
       Nagy, along with representatives of WHO and UNICEF, 
     negotiated a truce so immunization days could be held in June 
     that year. Rotary rented planes, boats and four-wheel-drive 
     vehicles to deliver vaccine, and disbursed $4 million to far-
     flung vaccinators. About 2.5 million children were 
     vaccinated.
       On Sept. 2, Angola marked its second year without a single 
     case of polio.

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