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Bolton Castle is Purple

Visitors to Wensleydale will have been surprised to see Bolton Castle taking on a purple hue over the last week.

This was to mark World Polio day which took place on the 24^th October. Polio is a highly infectious disease that most commonly affects children under the age of 5. The virus is spread from person to person, typically through contaminated water. It can attack the nervous system, and in some instances, lead to paralysis. In 1985, Rotary pledged to rid the world of polio and spearheaded the campaign at a time when there were over 1000 polio cases a day in 125 countries. Today only two countries have endemic Polio, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and even in those countries the number of cases has fallen to low numbers.

However recent cutbacks to funding by governments across the world has meant that all the progress could be undone. Not only do the two remaining countries need to eliminate the virus completely work needs to continue to ensure that the levels of immunisation remains at a high level in the population across world to prevent the virus reappearing.

Donations can be made to the End Polio Now Campaign via our Charity Account by scanning this QR code