K.R. “Ravi” Ravindran, a business leader from Colombo, Sri Lanka, has taken office as the 105th president of Rotary International. He is the first Sri Lankan ever to serve at the head of the 1.2m member volunteer organization. 
 
As president, Ravindran will oversee Rotary's top humanitarian goal of eradicating the paralyzing infectious disease polio. 
 
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative, formed in 1988, is a public-private partnership led by Rotary, the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UNICEF, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and governments of the world. 
 
Rotary's focus is advocacy, fundraising, volunteer recruitment and awareness-building. Rotary club members worldwide have contributed more than US $1.4 billion and countless volunteer hours to the polio eradication effort.
 
Today, there are only three countries that have never stopped transmission of the wild poliovirus: Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan. Less than 370 polio cases were confirmed worldwide in 2014, which is a reduction of more than 99.9 percent since the 1980s, when the world saw about 1,000 cases per day.
 
As Sri Lanka's chair of Rotary's polio eradication efforts, Ravindran led efforts to eradicate polio from Sri Lanka. His country became one of the first in Asia to become polio-free in Asia. 
 
The PolioPlus task force which he headed consisted of representatives from Rotary, UNICEF and the Sri Lankan government. The partnership successfully negotiated a ceasefire with the northern militants to allow polio immunizations to continue during scheduled National Immunization Days.