Rotary club members across the region have been using the colour purple to spread the word about the global fight to eradicate polio.

Purple is the adopted colour of the End Polio Now campaign reflecting that when a child receives life-saving polio drops on mass polio immunisation days, their little finger is painted with a purple dye, so it is clear they have received their polio vaccine.

Prior to 1960 polio was endemic throughout the world causing paralysis and sometimes death. Polio can strike at any age but mainly affects children under five. Each year polio paralysed 350,000 children annually.

In 1985 Rotary International launched PolioPlus working with international partners, the first and largest internationally coordinated private-sector support of a public health initiative, with an initial fundraising target of US$120m which was soon achieved and surpassed.

Polio was eradicated from the UK, Europe and the Americas by the 1990s. In 2000 a record 550m children received the vaccine and the western pacific region from Australia to China was declared polio-free.

Today there are only two countries in the world where wild polio is endemic, Pakistan and Afghanistan. However cases have increased in both of those countries and as has recently been reported there have been cases in war torn Gaza.

To mark World Polio Day, which took place on October 24, Wensleydale Rotary Club lit Bolton Castle purple with permission of Lord Bolton, Tom Orde-Powlett.

Members have also been giving talks to schools about polio and have been planting purple flowering crocus with pupils.

On Teesside, members of Middlesbrough Erimus Rotary group and a team of supporters have planted almost 4,000 purple crocus bulbs at Teessaurus Park, working alongside planters from A V Dawson, Elite Consult and Cockfield Knight.

Erimus president Jacqui Molyneux said: "For many years Rotary has fought a global campaign to eradicate this awful illness from our planet with enormous success. Its incidence had been limited to sparsely populate areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan until very recently an outbreak occurred in Gaza. This reminds us all of the need to keep vaccinating babies and children across the world."

Erimus member and former primary school head teacher Ray Wallin added: "These purple crocus bulbs represent the inky fingers of babies and children in a far distant rural community who have received their polio vaccination – we are planting them here on Teesside to remind our populations that the battle against life changing illnesses needs to be continued."