Home / Employment / Contact / Search / Français / Español   

Press Centre

Information Note

Last chance to see 'The End of Polio: A global effort to end a disease' in New York

Photographs by Sebastião Saldado

On view at Aperture's Burden Gallery through 16 August 2002
The Burden Gallery, 20 East 23rd St, New York, NY 10010

New York, 2 August 2002 - The End of Polio: A Global Effort to End A Disease, a photography exhibition by acclaimed Brazilian photojournalist Sebastião Salgado, is on view until 16 August at the Aperture Foundation's Burden Gallery in New York. The show documents the massive effort driving the global campaign to secure a polio-free world.

The End of Polio promotes public awareness of the threat polio poses to children, and the solution evident in the success of the massive global effort to end it. Salgado, who is also a UNICEF Special Representative, tracks the campaign from the laboratories of France and the United States to the remotest reaches of the Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Pakistan, Somalia and Sudan. The exhibition also profiles www.endofpolio.org, a website featuring Salgado's images which recount the successful strategies and individual stories behind the global campaign.

Exhibition visitors can help close the remaining funding shortfall of $275 million needed to consign polio to history by visiting the exhibition and making a contribution, or by donating on-line at www.endofpolio.org. The next opportunity to view the exhibit will be in Berlin, Germany, from 18 August to 25 September 2002.

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative was launched in 1988, when polio paralysed more than 1,000 children per day. In 2001, there were just 480 new polio cases confined to only ten countries. The target to certify the world polio-free in 2005 is within reach, and polio can be the second disease after smallpox to be eradicated. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative is spearheaded by the World Health Organization, Rotary International, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and UNICEF. The exhibition is sponsored by the Initiative and by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI).

Burden Gallery hours: Monday - Friday, 9.30am - 5.30pm. For further information on gallery opening hours contact: Andrea Smith at Aperture, New York on (212) 505 5555.

***

For further information contact:

Jo Bailey, Communication Officer at UNICEF (212) 326 7566 or jbailey@unicef.org
Christine McNab, WHO, Geneva: + 41 79 254 6815 or mcnabc@who.int
Vivian Fiore, Rotary International, Evanston, IL (847) 866 3234 or fiorev@rotaryintl.org
Steve Stewart, CDC, Atlanta, (404) 639 8327 or znc4@cdc.gov