In 1996, the great African leader Nelson Mandela launched the Kick Polio Out of Africa campaign with Rotary International’s support, setting out a vision for a polio-free Africa. At the time, wild polio paralysed 75,000 children each year. To protect communities from this crippling disease, African leaders, health workers, volunteers, parents, global donors and organizations united to reach every child with polio vaccines.  

On 25 August 2020, after four years without a single case of wild polio, the African region has been certified free of wild poliovirus. Decades of extraordinary investment has paid off. The disease is now only found in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Yet, the job is not finished. These efforts must continue to prevent wild polio from returning and to end all forms of polio for good – both in Africa and globally.

 

Lloyd was born in the North Island however he now resides in Dunedin with his young family and enjoys the active life of surfing and mountain biking that this region offers. Lloyd started his business “Ahika” in 2008 as a 2 person partnership and today they have 9 staff.
The business offers consultancy and planning on how to be more efficient where carbon emissions are created in a business through energy rich production methods. Ahika can identify these emissions and through planning and making meaningful changes they can reduce that carbon. New Zealand has ratified the Paris Agreement to combat climate change and passed the Zero Carbon Act in 2019 into law with unanimous support from all political parties. The act provides a framework to develop climate change policies to a low emissions economy but this will add significant costs to those industries in the future. Presently the carbon unit is worth $25 per ton  but this is likely to grow to $100 or even over $200 in the next decade. The main industries that this will affect are fossil fuels, meat works, mining, forestry, landfills, farming and any other industry that requires considerable energy to operate. Ahika helps these companies to change by identifying their emissions in areas of their business. Examples of this were coal boilers(now being phased out) recycling  and even lagging pipes in factories can result in considerable energy savings and therefore less carbon emissions and future serious costs effecting the profitability of those companies. Another way to off set the carbon credits is to plan and plant forests to obtain carbon credits as trees absorb carbon. Many large industrial companies including Fonterra and Air NZ are already engaged in these projects to keep their costs down in the future.