Rotary Sri Lanka to tap global network to woo investments, tourism

Sri Lankan Rotarians fund donation to Rotarians from the United States Peter Teahen and John Ockenfels of Shueyville raise money and awareness to help eradicate polio at a ceremony held at Port City Sales Gallery – Pic by Ruwan Walpola

• Two US Rotarians Peter Teahen and John Ockenfels arrive as part of a 90-day round the world tour in a single engine aircraft to raise funds and bring awareness that polio must be eradicated globally

Rotary Sri Lanka on Sunday announced plans to tap tapping to its global network to woo investments and tourism.

“We Rotarians of Sri Lanka wish to explore the two high network Rotarians to market Sri Lanka for investment and tourism opportunities,” said Rotary District Governor for Sri Lanka and Maldives Engineer Pubudu De Zoysa.

The new initiative was announced at a briefing at the Sales Gallery Port City in partnership with the CHEC Port City Ltd., where Rotary Sri Lanka welcomed two Rotarians from the United States Peter Teahen and John Ockenfels who are on a 90-day round the world tour in a single engine aircraft to raise funds and bring awareness that polio must be eradicated globally.

“Rotary Sri Lanka has taken the high ground by the theme event ‘Visit Sri Lanka’ given that the country was the first country to be declared polio free in South Asia,” said De Zoysa. The two US Rotarians participated in a signature 20km cycle/vehicle parade ‘Ride for Polio’ to mark the visit.

She said the two senior Rotarian from the United States have powered their own Jet to fly to 27 countries across the world and raise funding for the eradication of polio globally. “As we speak over $ 6 billion have been invested by Rotary to support governments to eradicate the deadly virus polio,” she added.

De Zoysa also said Rotary Sri Lanka continues to engage in the country by investing over Rs. 2 billion on health, water purification, sanitation and now environment areas.

“Sri Lanka became the first country in South Asia to become polio free. But as long as one case remains anywhere in the world the whole world and Sri Lanka are vulnerable. And for that reason alone vaccination efforts must continue throughout the world until the job is finished,” emphasised De Zoysa. “We must make the world polio free when the Port City of Sri Lanka is operational,” she added.

“We want Sri Lanka to be cervical cancer free by 2030 apart from the many initiatives that Rotary Sri Lanka is initiating,” said De Soyza adding “We also want Rotarians from around the world to invest in the new developments like the Port City Financial centre and boat marina.”

“The new target for eradication of polio is 2025. It will coincide with the opening of the facilities in the Port City. Children will no longer have to worry about being paralysed and just as the Port City brings a new dawn to Sri Lanka, the risk of polio will be banished from earth,” said project ‘Flight for Polio‘ Chairman Dr. Rohantha Athukorala.

“We want the world to be polio free by the time the Port City becomes operational,” said Rotary International former President K.R. Ravindran, who brokered a deal to immunise children of the North East during the height of terrorism way back in the 1990s.

In 1985, a small group of people agreed that children everywhere in the world must be protected from polio. All that was necessary was adequate supplies of vaccines, the funds to procure it and the will to administer it to every child. What began as a dream in 1985, has grown into the largest private sector- public sector international health initiative ever – an initiative with Rotary International at its core with WHO, UNICEF, Gates Foundation and CDC as co-partners. At that time there were 350,000 cases per annum of the wild polio virus (WPV) around the world. Today because of focussed vaccination efforts only a handful of WPV cases exist in the world and that too limited to Afghanistan and Pakistan only. And yet even if one case survives then the whole world is at risk, warned Ravindran.

Rotary has been at the forefront of eradication efforts and its total financial contribution towards this effort has exceeded $ 2.7 billion globally. Its contribution to buy vaccines for Sri Lanka in the nineties was several million dollars. Thanks to their efforts WHO states that during this period the world has now averted about 20m children from being affected or paralysed. Over 650,000 paralytic cases of polio are now prevented every year thanks to the vaccination efforts.

Recent modelling attests that eradicating polio will generate $ 14 billion in expected cumulative cost savings by 2050, when compared with the cost countries will incur for controlling the virus indefinitely. In financial terms, the global effort to eradicate polio has already saved more than $ 27 billion in health costs since 1988.