From the President:

 

Last Saturday afternoon, I went to Turning Point Center to participate in a joint service project between our club and Heights Rotary Club.   I went because I am the President and I thought it was my duty.  Sometimes duty is all we have to pull us out of our self-involvement.  What we do every 3^rd Saturday at 4:45 is to help Heights Club serve dinner to 40-50 elderly homeless people.  Through our club 501c3 charitable foundation (Memorial-Spring Branch Rotary Charities, Inc.) we also donate $150/month to help buy the food that we serve.

 

Stephen Monson, Sergeant-at-Arms of the Heights Club, is the driving force behind this project.  He commands a crew of Heights volunteers who shop and cook the food.  When I arrived, there were 2 giant pots of milky, buttery water coming to a boil in the kitchen, just about ready to mix with the instant mashed potatoes.  A big pot of green beans was keeping warm and we were waiting for the friend chicken to arrive.  Bill Haglund and Sheila Franklin, from our club, were setting up ranks of solo cups filled with ice and sodas.  4 watermelons were chilling in a tub of ice and I volunteered to be the slicer.  Other people had set places around the 2 parallel rows of tables, and put out rolls.   When the chicken arrived…we were ready!

 

As I moved among the diners, bringing extra chicken and second helpings, I didn’t have time to think about why they were there. I didn’t feel pity for them. They didn’t show up as needy people that I was there to “help”.  They were there to enjoy a good meal and I was there to serve it!  I loved it!

 

Bill and Sheila told me that the next 2 third Saturdays are big-time Aggie football weekends, so they won’t be there.  I won’t be there in September, because I am representing our club at the Indian-American Chamber of Commerce Gala.  So I need some other folks to step up.  Stephen Monson will be at our Health Fair Service Project on Saturday.  If you have a chance, get him to tell you about Turning Point Center and how he got involved.

 

Pakistan has become the second polio-endemic country to introduce the inactivated polio vaccine into the country’s routine immunization schedule, a move which will benefit more than four million children per year across the country.

 

Pakistan is one of only three countries in the world where polio remains endemic. Nigeria, which recently marked one year without a case of wild polio, introduced the vaccine in February of this year, and Afghanistan is due to begin using IPV in the coming weeks. While every country in the world is set to introduce IPV, endemic countries will greatly benefit from the boost in immunity that new evidence has clearly demonstrated that adding one dose of IPV to OPV offers to children as they fight to end transmission of the virus. Aziz Memon from Rotary International emphasized that “… adding at least one dose of IPV to the routine immunization schedule is the best possible way to protect your children from life-long polio paralysis, while the disease is being eradicated from the remaining endemic hotspots.”    

 

 

 

Pakistan - No new Polio cases reported in Pakistan this week.  Twenty-nine Polio cases have been reported in 2015 compared to 117 at this time last year.  Three new polio positive environmental samples were reported this week