In March this year I was part of a team of six professionals from the agriculture and tourism industries who made the trip to Tasmania on a four-week Professional Development Exchange to visit leading farming and tourism operations. Juliana Baxter was our team leader who gave us the benefit of her experience as a Rotarian at Invercargill North, and as Visitor Manager at the incredible Bill Richardson Transport World. Also on the team was Luisa Kuresa of Bill Richardson Transport World, Angela Juergensen of Queenstown Resort College, contractor and Winton dairy farmer Lis Rietveld, high country Merino farmer Andrew Jopp of Alexandra, and myself, a dairy farm manager and compliance contractor. The team immediately bonded well, with thanks to some planning sessions with Dave McKissock, and much of the value from the trip was from bouncing ideas and observations off each other. The following article is a very brief summation of a just few of the incredible vocational visits which Rotary gave us access to.
Indeed, this year the number of cases of polio in Pakistan has increased and the virus transmission has intensified. Pakistan’s case count now stands at 19.
Of the total 19 cases, 13 have been detected from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, while three were detected from Punjab and Sindh each.
Polio eradication is very simple: if you vaccinate enough children in a given area, then poliovirus has nowhere to hide and disappears from that area.
Paralysis cases spiked after a vaccination drive was derailed by false rumors that dozens of children had collapsed and died.
After serious setbacks in April led to a cluster of new polio cases, Pakistan is revamping its vaccination strategy in a renewed effort to wipe out the virus.
Donald G. McNeil Jr. is a science reporter covering epidemics and diseases of the world’s poor. He joined The Times in 1976, and has reported from 60 countries.
