October 24 is World Polio Day. It is the day every year when Rotarians across the world re-commit themselves to ridding the world of polio. It’s a campaign that Rotary clubs started more than 40 years ago. Then, each year there would be about 360,000 new cases diagnosed every year — that’s one thousand cases a day.
Untold millions of children and adults would die or have devastating disabilities caused by the disease which is spread in unclean water.
So Rotary pledged to immunise every at-risk child across the world. They have raised billions of pounds and administered 2.5 billion doses of vaccines. So far this year there have been only seven new cases and there are only two countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the disease is endemic. Rotarians and their partners use purple crocuses as their marketing tool because every child they immunise must dip one of their little fingers in purple dye so the children receive only their dose… not that of their friends of neighbours.
But the purple crocuses can also beautify parks and open spaces. This October 24 seven Rotary members pitched in to plant a couple of thousand crocus corms in Knighton Park where next May 26 they will run a series of duck races to raise money for more vaccines to finally End Polio Now.
They worked alongside members of the Friends Of Knighton Park and the Leicester Environmental Volunteers who were busy cutting back trees and planting tete a tete narcissi around trees in an avenue alongside a tarmac path near Palmerston Way.
The Rotary team explained to their fellow volunteers why they were planting crocuses, which can provide a delicious meal for the grey squirrels in the park. As an experiment, the Rotary team laid down chilli powder which they had been advised would deter the squirrels. They stopped quickly when a passing dog obviously had developed a liking for the taste of raw chilli powder!
It seemed that Jess was not harmed, but the Rotary team will be delighted to report back in February and March whether or not the chilli powder really did deter the squirrels!
Please follow this link to the Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61550776955613 to learn more about next May’s duck races and how you can help.
Last edited: 17:20 on Tuesday, October 24, 2023
