Tomah Interact Club Raises Over $700 for Polio Project

Sunday, March 6th, 2022 -- 8:00 AM

In February 2022, the Tomah High School Interact Club held a “Purple Pinkie for Polio” cake pop fundraiser.

The club raised $746. The funds were sent to Rotary International for their Polio Project. An estimate of ten vaccines are purchased with each dollar; THS positively affected over 7,400 lives.

Why Purple Pinkie? When a child is vaccinated, their pinkie is marked with purple so those administering the vaccines will know they have already received it. This helps to keep track in places where the population is transient or homeless or there is a language barrier.

Polio, or poliomyelitis, is a paralyzing and potentially deadly infectious disease that most commonly affects children under the age of 5. The virus spreads from person to person, typically through contaminated water. It can then attack the nervous system.

Rotary has been working to eradicate polio for more than 35 years. The goal of ridding the world of this disease is closer than ever. As a founding partner of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, we’ve reduced polio cases by 99.9 percent since our first project to vaccinate children in the Philippines in 1979.

Today, polio remains endemic only in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But it’s crucial to continue working to keep other countries polio-free. If all eradication efforts stopped today, within 10 years, polio could paralyze as many as 200,000 children each year.

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