Purple4Polio Crocus Planting (5 December 2023)

Footes Lane will be blooming purple in February.

The two Rotary clubs in Guernsey (Rotary Club of Guernsey & Rotary Guernesiais) lead by Dave Parish along with a group of staff from KPMG met up on Dec 5th on Footes Lane to plant some 28,000 crocuses which brought the number of crocuses planted by the Rotary Clubs to 750,000.

Rotarian Dave Parish said it was a "great initiative" and "very worthwhile".

Commenting from a KPMG perspective, Miles Hardill said "It's great to be out here with many of our new starters doing a public service which also aligns to our KPMG Impact plan, specifically the Prosperity pillar".

So why crocuses? Crocus come in purple and children who receive the polio vaccine have their little (pinkie) finger dipped in purple dye so they can be easily identified as being inoculated. We plant crocuses to advertise and promote the ongoing End Polio Now campaign. Rotary International (supported by the Melinda & Bill Gates Foundation), along with the WHO and UNICEF have been responsible for the near eradication of Polio because it is still endemic in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

So what is polio? It is a paralyzing and potentially deadly infectious disease that most commonly affects children under 5. The virus (and sadly we now all know about those) spreads from person to person. There is no cure, however there is a safe and effective vaccine. Rotary have immunised nearly 3 Billion (yes, billion) children worldwide. Globally we have helped to reduce the cases by 99.9% since 1988 however until we end polio forever, every child is at risk. (Global eradication has been achieved in the past eg. smallpox). Projections calculate until we eradicate polio globally, if we stopped immunisations, within 10 years up to 200,000 new cases could occur around the world each year.