A disaster relief and community education official with the American Red Cross will discuss the organization’s efforts to eradicate measles deaths in Africa on Tuesday, Oct. 26, at Rogers State University.
The event, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 7 p.m. in Room 146 of Herrington Hall on the RSU campus in Claremore.
Bob Roberts of the American Red Cross in Tulsa will discuss the measles initiative, a long-term project to control the disease by vaccinating 200 million children in 36 African countries. The goal of the project is to completely eliminate measles deaths by 2005.
Roberts has been with the Tulsa Area Chapter of the American Red Cross for 13 years, coordinating disaster relief and community education, at the local, national and international levels.
His presentation will be followed by the showing of “Children of the Wind: Disease of the Wind,” a short film about a group of eight school children from Hawthorne, Calif., who traveled to Kenya in 2001 for a week-long mass measles vaccination campaign. By the end of the week, 98 percent of Kenyan children between the ages of nine months and 15 years received measles vaccinations. The film was written and directed by James Keach and narrated by actress Jane Seymour.
The event is sponsored by the American Red Cross Corps, an RSU student organization. For more information, call Dr. Nat Hardy, advisor and assistant professor at (918) 343-7588.