A social media campaign is due to be launched today to raise awareness around polio.

The campaign, to mark World Polio Day, will be run by Bermuda’s Rotary Clubs and comes as the United States has seen its first case in a decade.

Pembroke Rotary president Yanique Dale said that Rotary’s main focus was to raise awareness that the preventable disease exists now and is not an archaic problem that had been eradicated decades ago.

“Having the knowledge and education of what polio does to a child and how it can be prevented, I am sure that any well-thinking individual would want to prevent that.

“Through education and awareness, we can prevent that sort of thing from happening now. We can prevent that sort of heartache.”

According to Reuters, a New York resident was diagnosed with polio in July, making him the first confirmed case of the disease within the US in nearly a decade.

US News reported that New York Governor Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency in early September to try and combat the disease’s spread.

Ms Dale said: “We never thought that the disease would come back to the western side of the world, because Rotary International had been focusing on all the other continents, and now it is back in the West.”

In addition to education, the Rotary Clubs of Bermuda plan to raise money for polio awareness.

“The idea is to reach out to a couple of companies and see if they have the capacity to donate to this cause,” Ms Dale said.

Any donation that is made towards polio awareness around the world will be matched by Bill and Melinda Gates’s charity, the Gates Foundation.

Ms Dale concluded: “As a little block in the Atlantic Ocean, let us band together to educate the world on this preventable disease.”