By Ann Marie Kimball, MD, MPH, Member of the Rotary Club of Bainbridge Island; World Community Service chair; and member of the Rotary Foundation Cadre of Technical Advisers
Rotary is engaging vigorously in the fight against COVID-19. I am honored to serve on a new task force Rotary International has created, but it’s also caused me to think about our role as Rotarians. How can we continue our progress toward polio eradication in the time of COVID-19?
Rotary embodies two fundamental concepts in Global Health Security:
1) “Global to Local” or “glocal” – a span of activities which reach from the highest level of global cooperation to the most local activities centered on individuals, families and communities.
2) “All of Society”– the call and response for pandemic preparedness and other global threats. Such threats impact the whole of society and the response consequently must involve all of society.