The Rotary Club of Rayleigh Mill marks World Polio Day by planting 5000 crocus corms in and around Rayleigh

Inspired in part by Rotary’s volunteering commitment and fundraising success, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) was launched in 1988. This remarkable partnership which includes Rotary, World Health Organization, UNICEF, the US Centre for Disease Control & Prevention and, more recently, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and GAVI the Vaccine Alliance.

Over the last 35 years, Rotary members, working with communities around the world, have contributed more than US$2.1 billion and countless volunteer hours to the fight to end polio and have seen the number of cases go down from over 1,000 polio cases a day in 125 countries, paralysing and killing children in 1979 to a total of 35 cases in Pakistan and 3 in Afghanistan in 2022, a reduction of 99.9% in the whole world. 

To mark this tremendous achievement the Rotary Club of Rayleigh Mill have chosen to involve four local primary schools, Hockley Primary School, Wyburns Primary School, Edward Francis Primary School and Downhall Primary School in planting purple crocus corms in their school gardens. Rayleigh Town Council have also participated in the programme when the Leader of the Council, Deborah Mercer, Councillor Ian Ward and Councillor Danielle Belton joined Rotarians in planting the crocus corms in the flower beds in King George V Playing fields on World Polio Day, 24^th October.

Purple crocuses are chosen as an appropriate symbol of the on-going programme to eliminate polio as the many millions of children, when they are immunised stain their little finger purple to signify that they have received the vaccine.

It remains a potent symbol, not only of the amount that has been achieved in defeating this deadly virus, but the on-going fight to totally eliminate the disease.