Purple crocus sprout in the warm weather for polio awareness

Sunday 03 March 2019

Hundreds of thousands of purple crocus planted around the island are beginning to flower as part of an initiative to raise awareness of polio worldwide.

The flowers were planted last year by Rotary Club volunteers, floral groups and gardening firms as part of Purple4Polio.

With thanks to sponsors Appleby (Guernsey) LLP in recent years, local Rotary members have joined with His Excellency the Lieutenant Governor & Lady Corder, Floral Guernsey volunteers, local community groups and Bernie's Gardening Services to plant over 400,000 purple crocus corms in support of End Polio Now, Rotary’s polio eradication programme.

Millions of corms have been planted across Great Britain and Ireland as part of Rotary’s Purple4Polio campaign which aims to make polio, a debilitating infectious disease, the second to be totally eradicated in human history. 

Pictured: Locations of the purple crocus planted in the Bailiwick. 

Mike Le Conte, President of Rotary Club of Guernsey said:

“We are very grateful to everyone who helped plant the crocuses. We would love the public to share their photos with us by emailing high resolution copies to rtnjannine@icloud.com so we can put together an online photo album."

Purple is a symbolic colour as it is the dye used to mark a child’s little finger when they have received the immunisation (pictured above, photo by CDC Global Health). Joanne Reynolds, President of Rotary Guernesiais said:

"You can play your part in the fight for a polio free world by having some Purple4Polio fun on Friday 8 March. This is our annual Purple Pinkie Day, we would also love to have photos of what you are doing then such as Purple dress down, Purple hair, Purple nails, Purple raffle or anything else you can imagine."

Rotary has helped immunise billions of children overseas against polio since 1985 and now there are just three endemic countries reduced from 125. Thanks to Rotary, WHO, CDC, UNICEF and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, those children are creating lives full of possibilities instead of living lives filled with pain and struggle caused by deformed limbs and other polio symptoms.  

Pictured: A child receiving the polio vaccination. Photo by Julien Harneis via Flickr. 

Since Rotary and its partners launched the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) over 30 years ago, the incidence of polio has plummeted by more than 99.99%, from about 350,000 cases a year in 125 countries to just 33 cases in 2018 and with three remaining polio-endemic countries: Afghanistan; Pakistan; and Nigeria.

More than 400 million children have to receive lifesaving polio vaccine drops multiple times in over 60 at risk countries each year. This is in addition to the inclusion of polio in routine immunisations carried out in the rest of the world as in Guernsey.

Until the world sees zero cases and zero evidence of the polio virus in sewage and water samples across the entire globe there is a real threat of polio coming back to countries everywhere.