- Title: SOMALIA: UNITED NATIONS BEGINS VACCINATION CAMPAIGN TO ERADICATE POLIO
- Date: 17th September 2000
- Summary: BAIDOA, SOMALIA (RECENT) (REUTERS) 1. SLV STREET SCENES (3 SHOTS) 0.13 2. TRACKING SHOT UNICEF FLAG FLYING FROM UNICEF VEHICLE DRIVING TOWARDS VILLAGE 0.21 3. SLV CROWD OF PEOPLE 0.27 4. MV SOMALI NATIONAL PREPARING POLIO VACCINATION; MOTHER STANDING WITH HER CHILD; RELUCTANT CHILDREN RECEIVING VACCINATION/ CHILDREN CRYING (7 SHOTS)
- Embargoed: 2nd October 2000 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: BAIDOA, SOMALIA
- Country: Somalia
- Reuters ID: LVA50PDWP41L3L86S5VSB8TWJB7B
- Story Text: The United Nations has begun a three month campaign to
vaccinate young children across Somalia against polio and aims
to eliminate the disease from this impoverished and war torn
country in the Horn of Africa.
Aid workers from the United Nations Childrens Fund
(UNICEF) together with clan elders across Somalia, hope to
administer oral vaccines against the crippling disease to 1.4
million children under the age of five by the middle of November.
Mothers with small children strapped to their backs, some
of whom had walked several miles in the sweltering heat,
waited patiently as locally appointed field assistants
administered the vaccine to crying babies.
The World Health Organisation rates Somalia as one of the
world's worst polio affected countries. The disease has
largely been eradicated across most of the globe.
Health officials blame a bitter 10-year civil war and
widespread poverty for the prevalence of the disease, but
insist that the campaign will be successful.
"Our plan is to vaccinate all the children in the
different regions, 100% of all the children in different
regions and that's the target we are looking for and the
community is ready to do that and they are very helpful in
support of the eradication because they are themselves
involved in vaccinating their children," said Mohamed Ahmed
Alasow, a field officer with UNICEF in Baidoa.
Baidoa was the hardest hit in the 1990 famine which
devastated the country and the city was nicknamed the city of
death.
Despite a new Somali president being appointed last month
for the first time in 10 years, the vaccination programme has
had to be delayed in the Lower Shabelle region and the capital
Mogadishu due to fighting and political instability.
Somalia descended into anarchy about ten years ago when
militias overthrew dictator Mohammed Siad Barre and then
turned their guns on each other. An American led United
Nations military intervention failed and the alliance withdrew
humiliated.
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