Warrington Town Hall, lit purple with Warrington Rotary Club, Purple For Polio, October 24th 2019, world polio day - Sankey Street, WA1 1UH

Warrington Town Hall, lit purple with Warrington Rotary Club, Purple For Polio, October 24th 2019, world polio day - Sankey Street, WA1 1UH

Tony Smith / Alamy Stock Photo

Image ID: 2AE02ND

On World Polio Day, 24th October, thousands of Rotary clubs around the world will hold events and fundraisers to recognize the progress in the global fight to end polio. Warrington Rotary, as part of its Purple for Polio campaign, and with the support of Warrington Borough Council, intend to mark the occasion by lighting the town hall purple In 1985, Rotary launched the first initiative to tackle global polio eradication through the mass vaccination of children. Since the first project to vaccinate children polio has been eradicated by 99.9%. Although there is no cure for polio it can be prevented with a vaccine. Rotary has been joining forces with associations such as the World Health Organization in a battle to reach the remaining endemic countries- Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria. Unless polio is eradicated everywhere, within ten years we could see as many as 200,000 new cases annually. World Polio Day is an opportunity to raise awareness of the devastating effects of polio and why Rotary clubs work together to eradicate it from the world. The first effective attempt to fight polio was made by Jonas Salk in 1955. He and his team created an inactivate vaccine. To honour his work, Rotary International named October 24th as World Polio Day.

Location: Sankey St, Warrington, Cheshire, England, UK, WA1 1UH