Adele Thomas, Conrad Kemp and the Outbreak of Polio in the Congo.

Adele Thomas is our speaker this week.  She is a Past President of the Rotary Club of Morningside and Chairman of the District Membership Committee.  In her spare time she is Professor of Business Management, Faculty of Management University of Johannesburg.  She will be talking to us on "Membership - some of the more subtle challenges".

Conrad Kemp leaped into the breech last week to talk to us about Dramatic Need, an organisation he feels passionately about.  It brings the dramatic arts to underprivileged children in South Africa and Rwanda and he spoke about the work being done at the Pete Patsa Community Arts Centre in Rammolotsi outside Viljoenskroon in the Free State.  Dramatic Need has an impressive array of trustees that include Danny Boyle and Anthony Sher.  He was quite reticent about himself so I thought I would reveal all!


Conrad Kemp grew up in Johannesburg, and studied law, English literature and international studies at Stellenbosch University, where he received his Honours Blazer for Culture in 1998. He entered the corporate world in 2000, joining Nedcor as part of their Leadership Development Programme. He became a project-manager in Client Information Analytics in 2001. In September 2001 he decided to train as an actor. This he did at The Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin, Ireland, receiving the Riverdance Scholarship in 2002 and graduating in 2003. In 2004 he was nominated for Best Male Performance at the Dublin Fringe Festival for his portrayal of Hally in Master Harold and The Boys. He made his West End debut in Marie Jones* two-hander, Stones In His Pockets in 2006. He has performed all over Ireland and Northern Ireland, England, South Africa and, once, at The Prague Theatre Festival. In January 2008 he could be seen on screen as part of the official selection at the Sundance Film Festival in 'The Sound of People', which also won six other international awards at a variety of festivals. More recently he wrote and performed 'The Clown and Mrs Fell' at The National Arts Festival, acted in the BBC drama 'Outcasts' and the Sony picture, 'Sniper:Reloaded'. He has written and devised plays, worked in applied theatre in vulnerable communities, taught rhetoric and argumentation at tertiary and corporate levels, written for production, and was the Head of Screen Acting at AFDA Johannesburg in 2008. He has written on theatre for national newspapers and produced public artwork for the City of Johannesburg. He graduated as a bursary participant from the Meridian Programme run by Common Purpose in 2009. He is a trustee for the charity Dramatic Need SA. He is also co-owner of BOAT (the coffee shop) at 44 Stanley Avenue....

If you are an ageing radical I put the Sex Pistols on the video bar with their infamous God Save the Queen!  You'll also see that I have added our major projects and also put us on Networked blogs.  Whether that will have any affect I know not!


Joan Donet has asked us to remember food items, such as rice, for the CCCCC's and toys for our Interact Club's Christmas Project. 


Rotary responds to Congo Polio Crisis

Rotary International and its partners in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative -- the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- are responding to a recent outbreak of wild poliovirus in the Republic of the Congo. Rotary is providing a total of US$500,000 in emergency grants to WHO and UNICEF for immediate polio immunization efforts throughout the country.

At least 97 people have died in the outbreak, with 226 cases of acute flaccid paralysis reported as of 9 November. Most of the cases involve young people between ages 15 and 29. To date, four of the AFP cases have been confirmed as polio.

The outbreak is due to imported poliovirus that is related to the virus circulating in Angola. The Congo Republic recorded its last case of indigenous polio in 2000, and urgent action is required by government and partner agencies to again make the country polio-free.

"Polio outbreaks highlight our global vulnerability to infectious disease," says Dr. Robert Scott, chair of Rotary’s International PolioPlus Committee. "It reinforces the fact that polio 'control' is not an option, and only successful eradication will stop the disease."

According to WHO, at least three national vaccination campaigns are planned to combat the outbreak, with the first targeting three million people of all ages in the Congo Republic and parts of neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola on 12 November and 18-22 November. Subsequent campaigns are planned for 3-7 December and 26-30 December.

"Every man, every woman, every child will be immunized irrespective of their past immunization status," says Dr. Luis Sambo, WHO regional director for Africa. "This way we can be assured that everybody is reached, including young adults, whose immunity may be low."

Outbreaks of imported polio cases are not uncommon during eradication efforts, underscoring the critical need to stop transmission of the virus in the remaining polio-endemic countries: Afghanistan, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan.

"Our experience shows that where polio transmission has been stopped before, it can be stopped again," Scott says. "A fast, large-scale, high-quality immunization response using the new tools at hand, along with strong surveillance, is absolutely critical."