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South Foreland Rotary Club in Dover travel 1,000 miles in Vauxhall and Peugeot for End Polio Now campaign

Eight Rotarians are travelling 1,000 miles in two old cars to help wipe out a crippling disease.

The group, who left Dover on Monday, are joining fellow members throughout the country for the End Polio Now campaign.

Annual cases worldwide are down to single figures but this is part of a final push to completely eradicate the illness.

Rotarians going on the 1,000 drive and their supporters.
Rotarians going on the 1,000 drive and their supporters.

Members of the Rotary Club of South Foreland left in two cars outside the Dover Marina Hotel and Spa at Waterloo Crescent.

Overall team leader is Robin Dodridge travelling with three fellow members in a 2010 Vauxhall Zafira called Herdi.

Robin Dodridge with his car Herdi.
Robin Dodridge with his car Herdi.

He said: "This is a grand tour of England and Wales.

"We are coming towards the end of the campaign.

"There were more than 300,000 cases a year in the 1980s world and now there have just been eight so far this year so we're nearly there."

Suzanne Taylor-Warren with her car The Pug.
Suzanne Taylor-Warren with her car The Pug.

They will be joined by a second car, a 2003 Peugeot 307 called The Pug, in a group led by Suzanne Taylor-Warren.

She said: "Our car is a banger that was donated to us by one of our sponsors. One of our team has worked on it and brought it back to life."

Team South Foreland will meet fellow Rotarians at Brands Hatch before going to Exeter, Brynmawr in Wales and then Cambridge before going to Preston and ending in Halifax tomorrow afternoon.

The team has nearly reached its £2,000 target, through donations and sponsorship, so will push to raise more.

The final amount raised will be trebled by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

A total 50 teams are taking part in the event between Monday and tomorrow.

It by Rotary International in Great Britain and Ireland called the Purple for Polio Grand Tour.

The colour will be prominent in the cars' decoration and symbolises the fact that children dip a finger in purple dye once they have been vaccinated.

Polio is a serious, infectious disease of spinal nerves that can cause temporary or permanent paralysis.

It is almost eradicated but still exists in a few remote areas such as mountainous Afghanistan.

The threat will finally be lifted when all children in these areas are vaccinated and the virus destroyed.

The Rotary Organisations has been campaigning to wipe out the disease for nearly 40 years through worldwide vaccination programmes.

This has helped to reduce he number of children contracting the disease from 1,000 a week in 1979 to just the eight this year.

Polio is only extinct when there are no cases for three years.

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