On a bright, cool and windy Autumn morning last Sunday in Oaken Grove Park a party of Maidenhead Rotary Club members planted some 5000 bulbs to highlight their “Purple for Polio” international campaign to rid the world of Polio by a worldwide vaccination policy particularly for children.
The significance of the “Purple for Polio” campaign has been chosen by Rotary as this is the colour of the ink which children around the world colour the tip of their smallest finger on one hand to designate that they have been immunised against the disease in the current year.
Rotary, the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention launched the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in 1988 to eliminate Polio from the World. Rotary’s efforts to eradicate polio have been described as “one of the finest humanitarian projects the world has ever known” and Rotary has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
On 24th October Rotary are joined by Bill & Melinda Gates to highlight World Polio Day. Since 2013, the Gates Foundation has matched every $1 Rotary commits to polio eradication on a two for one basis which equates to $35 (£25) million per year. Rotary, together with matching funds from the Gates Foundation, has contributed more than $1.6 billion to end polio.
Since Rotarians around the world started the fight against polio, they have reduced the number of polio cases by 99.9 percent from about 350,000 cases a year to just 37 cases in 2016 and reached more than 2.5 billion children around the world with the vaccine.
If you would like to help or contribute to this worthwhile effort to stamp out Polio from our planet please contact the Rotary Club of Maidenhead.
The significance of the “Purple for Polio” campaign has been chosen by Rotary as this is the colour of the ink which children around the world colour the tip of their smallest finger on one hand to designate that they have been immunised against the disease in the current year.
Rotary, the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention launched the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in 1988 to eliminate Polio from the World. Rotary’s efforts to eradicate polio have been described as “one of the finest humanitarian projects the world has ever known” and Rotary has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
On 24th October Rotary are joined by Bill & Melinda Gates to highlight World Polio Day. Since 2013, the Gates Foundation has matched every $1 Rotary commits to polio eradication on a two for one basis which equates to $35 (£25) million per year. Rotary, together with matching funds from the Gates Foundation, has contributed more than $1.6 billion to end polio.
Since Rotarians around the world started the fight against polio, they have reduced the number of polio cases by 99.9 percent from about 350,000 cases a year to just 37 cases in 2016 and reached more than 2.5 billion children around the world with the vaccine.
If you would like to help or contribute to this worthwhile effort to stamp out Polio from our planet please contact the Rotary Club of Maidenhead.
