Purple4Polio World Polio Day

Thornhill Rotary Club will be marking World Polio Day on the 24th October with the launch of a special edition Tartan chocolate to raise funds for their 'End Polio Now' campaign. Hand made at her shop in the town by Liz Cole, the Moniaive Chocolatier, the Club has already been receiving orders for supplies of these unique chocolates from other Rotary clubs in the area.

Moniaive Chocolatier Liz Cole (L) has been making several thousand of these hand-made Tartan chocolates for the Rotary 'End Polio Now' fund raising campaign, and which will be launched on Saturday 20th October in Thornhill. Taking delivery of them is Accountant Amy Muirhead, Thornhill & District Rotary Club's newest Member.

'We're delighted at this early stage at the uptake of the product," said Mike Marshall, Rotary's Foundation Convener for the Club. "Liz has worked hard on producing these very attractive chocolates for us - for a donation of a £1 coin for each piece, Rotary will be able to meet the cost of at least two doses of polio vaccine for young children at risk in the three remaining countries where the crippling and potentially deadly disease is still endemic." He continued: "Rotary's worldwide fight against polio began thirty years ago, and tremendous advances have been made.  But the final steps on any journey are often the some of the hardest and 2018 has been far from easy, with 14 cases in the first eight months of the year. In this country, we take vaccination against polio for granted, but there are still people here who were unlucky enough to catch this paralysing  disease in the 1940s and '50s, before a vaccine became available, and continue to this day to cope with their disabilities." 

The story of one man's fight to survive polio is beautifully told in the new film 'Breathe', (starring Andrew Garner & Claire Foy), and which Thornhill Rotary will be showing in a series of pop-up cinema screenings in the Upper Nithsdale area, commencing on Saturday, 20th October at Closeburn Village Hall (Matinee at 3.30; Evening at 7.30).    Rotary Clubs everywhere are hoping that very soon 

polio becomes just the second human disease ever to be eradicated. Every £1 raised by Rotary is matched 2:1 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation - so that £1 becomes £3. Without full funding and political commitment, this paralysing disease could return to previously polio-free countries, putting children everywhere at risk, including the UK.

M.M./A.S. 14-10-2018