The role of the Rotary Club -- and the Hamilton branch in particular -- in the worldwide eradication of polio was highlighted yesterday at the club's weekly luncheon.

Former Attorney General Walter Maddocks returned to the island to address the club.

Mr. Maddocks is now based in the Oxford area of England. He served as Bermuda's Attorney General from 1991 to 1994, preceding Elliott Mottley and was also a past international executive director of the Polio Plus programme.

It was with a sense of nostalgia that he addressed the club yesterday, he told his fellow Rotarians, having joined the club in 1971.

Mr. Maddocks used his speech to stress the importance of the club's service projects and to highlight the large contribution the club made to the worldwide eradication of polio.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that polio will be eradicated by 2005.

The Polio Plus programme was originally charged with raising funds for the "control'' of polio.

In the past, Mr. Maddocks pointed out, they didn't believe polio could be eradicated because it was believed to be transmissible by other primates such as apes and monkeys.

Mr. Maddocks said that the idea behind the programme came from a former Hamilton branch president -- and former International Rotary president -- W.

Jack Davis.

"Towards the end of his (international) presidency, he had travelled the world and seen an enormous amount of suffering and disease and he determined Rotary could do more to alleviate health (problems) and hunger and do more to help the poor,'' Mr. Maddocks said.

So the Health, Hunger and Humanity programme was developed which evolved into Polio Plus in 1985.

Polio Plus worked in conjunction with the WHO and when in 1987, the scientific community announced polio could not be transmitted by apes and monkeys and therefore could be eradicated, that became the programme's goal.

With the goal set to be achieved in 2005, Mr. Maddocks said that a half a billion dollars in cash and millions in donations in kind have been Rotary's contribution to that.

"Today about three million children who might otherwise have been paralysed are running around and playing safely,'' he said.

And between 1985 and 2000 over two billion children received polio vaccine immunisations worldwide, with 450 million receiving oral vaccines in 1999 alone, he said.

"We are winning the battle and polio's eradication in 2005 will coincide with the Rotary's 100th birthday,'' said Mr. Maddocks.

"The battle is not widely known and I wanted to tell the people of Bermuda what good Rotary does in the world. I wanted the members of this club to be aware it has a tradition of service of which it should be proud.'' Return visit: Walter Maddocks