Members in Attendance (13):  Debbie Brown, Pat Bailey, Peter Brown, Jim Leyhane, Roberto Martinez, Kevin Leyhane, Phil Kellerman, Andy Leyhane, Terry Brewer, John Justino, Ray Hannan, Debbie Rodriguez and Charlie Foote.

By Zoom (1): Guest David Hannan.  

Guests (4): Dr. Jessica Kumar (Speaker) and family.

President Peter Brown called the meeting to order. 

Theme for the Year: “Building Community”

MEETING NOTES:

Iron Giraffe Bowl-a-Thon: The bowl-a-thon will be held on Sunday April 14 from 2 pm until 4 pm. The cost will be $13 per person for 50 bowlers. Per Phil Kellerman, sponsorships are $50. Please let Phil know if you want to be a sponsor.

Water for Kenya: Tony Kasura, one Peter and Debbie Brown’s guides during their trip to Maasai Mara Kenya, Edith Kenara of the Rotary Club of Enkare Naroch and Peter Brown agreed to locate the bore hole in Enabelibel Village at the Full Gospel Church. The next step is to develop a needs assessment. There will be a Zoom meeting tomorrow at noon with the Enkare Naroch Rotary Club. If you are interested in participating, contact Peter Brown or Roberto Martinez for the Zoom link.

Grant Training: There will be two sessions to choose from. Trainings will be held via Zoom on Wednesday, February 6th or Thursday, February 7th at 7 pm. The Club needs at least two people to attend.

PETS Training: The first of the four free virtual pre-PETS trainings will be held Monday, February 5th at 7 pm, Tuesday. The other trainings will be held on February 13th at 7 pm, Wednesday, February 21st at 7 pm and Thursday, February 29th at 7 pm.

The Rotary District in-person PETS training will be held March 15th through 17th at the Double Tree in Syracuse. Mario Cesar Martins de Carmargo from Brazil, the RI President for 2025-26, will be attending. Register early to secure a hotel room. For further information go to  http://www.RotaryEmpireMDPETS.org. The majority of the meeting will be held on Saturday if you are considering attending for one day.

Easter Baskets for Circles of Mercy: Roberto Martinez spoke to Shannon Romanowski at the YMCA. The YMCA will again partner with us. Roberto and Jim Leyhane will purchase 25 baskets and members of the YMCA will put the baskets together. Richard Zazycki of Circles of Mercy is asking that the baskets include coloring books, color pencils, facial tissues, toothpaste, toothbrushes, dental floss, hair combs, hairbrushes, small stuffed animals, toys, small games, small books, and different types of wrapped candy. Shannon needs the items for the baskets by March 18th so she can get the baskets to Richard by March 22nd. Easter is on March 31st this year.

Next Meeting: Thursday, February 1st at 6:00 pm at Moscatiello’s Italian Family Restaurant, Route 4, North Greenbush. Also, you can join the by Zoom using the link on the websites calendar page. Our speaker will be Richard Zazycki of Circles of Mercy.

Entree choices will be Antipasto Salid, Chicken Parmesan and Penne ala Vodka.

Jessica Kumar, D.O., MPH is the Medical Director of the Office of Communicable Diseases Control and Prevention. She did Residencies at Albany Medical Center and Case Western. She joined the Department of Health in 2019. She was hired for the Immunization Program but moved to Communicable Diseases with the outbreak of COVID. She worked on the vaccine related polio outbreak in 2022 in NYS.

Polio is caused by the Enterovirus poliovirus. The virus is passed through poor hygiene and ingestion of fecal contaminated food and/or water. People are most infectious prior to exhibiting symptoms although 75 percent of children show no symptoms. Only a small percentage develop paralysis. Jonas Salk developed an inactivated (killed) polio vaccine in 1955 and Albert Saben subsequently developed an attenuated live oral vaccine.

In 1988, polio was present in 25 countries. That year, the World Health Assembly established the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. Rotary is one of the major contributors to this initiative. Other contributors include UNICEF, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the CDC. Czechoslovakia was the first country to eliminate polio. There were 350,000 cases worldwide in 1988. Now there is less than 10. Polio is still endemic in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In June of 2022, New York State had the first case of paralytic polio since 2013. It was found through surveillance for acute flaccid myelitis. It was identified by genomic sequencing at Wadsworth Laboratories and confirmed by the CDC. It was a case of vaccine-derived polio virus. The attenuated live oral vaccine can mutate into a virus that cause disease. If an unvaccinated person comes in contact with the mutated virus, he/she can develop disease. The public health response included communication, media messaging, modeling, predictions of new infections and wastewater surveillance. The virus was found in wastewater in Rockland and Orange Counties. In New York State, 78.9 percent of children received the polio vaccine. Emphasis is on increasing vaccine coverage. For more information on polio, check the WHO Polio Guidelines https://www.who.int/health-topics/poliomyelitis#tab=tab_1 or the Pan American Health Association https://www.paho.org/en/topics/poliomyelitis.