To celebrate the end of his year as the President of the Rotary Club of Ashby Castle, Mark Arjoo has decided to undertake a marathon open water swim to raise funds and awareness for the Rotary supported End Polio Now charity.

On Sunday August 4th, Mark will take part in the Rutland Water SwimRutland event, covering a 2.5 mile (4km) distance, the furthest he has ever swam. This is a massive distance and an extreme physical challenge.

Since 1985, Rotary’s key humanitarian priority has been to rid the world of polio.

Rotary spearheaded the campaign at a time when there were over 1,000 polio cases a day in 125 countries, paralysing and even killing children.Today, the number of cases is down by 99.9%.

Over the last 35 years, Rotary members, working with communities around the world, have contributed more than US$2.1 billion and countless volunteer hours to the fight to end polio. Because of the efforts of Rotary and our partners, nearly 19 million people who would otherwise have been paralysed are walking, and more than 1.5 million people are alive who would otherwise have died.

Despite there only being a handful of cases left in the world, continued campaigning, health worker training and vaccination programmes are essential to stop the disease returning and ensuring the world is certified polio-free. Over 400 million children still have to receive their polio vaccinations by the Global Polo Eradication Initiative (GPEI) partners multiple times every single year in more than 50 countries.

Failure to eradicate polio could result in as many as 200,000 new cases worldwide every year within a decade.

So please, support Mark Arjoo in his marathon swim, and donate to a great cause.