A RETIRED Portland doctor has flown to India to help immunise 75 million children from the deadly polio disease.

Keith Barnard-Jones was a senior partner in a doctor's practice in Easton and also served as president of Rotary International in Great Britain.

The doctor and his wife Judy, a nurse, have worked on various humanitarian projects including helping Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong in 1981 and Sri Lanka in 1999.

In India Dr Bernard-Jones will work alongside 90,000 India Rotarians and the local authorities there.

India still holds the highest number of polio cases in the world with 304 reported cases this year.

Despite the highly infectious disease being reduced from 350,000 cases in 1980 to only 2,000 cases last year, the World Health Organisation has warned that the world-wide polio eradication programme faces a funding shortfall of more than £200 million.