After the heavy rain from Storm Ciarán, there was a brief respite on Sunday 05 November 2023. That provided the much needed opportunity for a small working party to visit the garden in Northwick Park Hospital (NPH) and plant some purple crocus corms for the coming spring.
Why is Rotary planting crocus corms? With any luck, the crocus blooms appear in time for “Rotary’s Birthday” on 23 February each year. Why purple crocuses? It reminds us all that our number one project in the world is Polio Eradication. Each child that is immunised has their little finger painted purple with a marker pen when they receive their polio immunisation. That way, the children can avoid getting ‘double-dosed’ and the immunisation teams can spot children who are yet to be immunised.
The project is working because on 31 October 2023, in the year to date there were only 10 recorded cases of wild virus polio in the whole world – 4 in Pakistan and 6 in Afghanistan. (Source: Global Polio Eradication Initiative website) The project will be completed when there are 3 years without any cases of wild polio virus.
