UNICEF Launches First Integrated Campaign against four Childhood
Diseases
----------------------------------------------------------------
New York, Dec 14 2004 12:00PM
With malaria and measles topping the list of child killers in
Africa, the United Nations public health agency and its chil-
dren's fund have launched their first effort to mount a single
integrated campaign to protect children from those diseases, as
well as from polio and intestinal worms, starting with 1 million
children in Togo.
The US$ 5.4 million integrated campaign of free vaccines and
anti-malarial mosquito bed nets, which started in the West Afri-
can country yesterday and runs through 19 December, involves
1,910 vaccinators and 2,680 volunteers in the effort to reach
even those children whose homes are inaccessible by road.
"If widely implemented, these nationwide integrated campaigns
may become the single most important step towards reducing child
deaths in Africa. Creative new approaches like this are the key
to ensuring the survival of thousands," UN Children's Fund (UNI-
CEF) Executive Director Carol Bellamy said.
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Director-
General Dr. Lee Jong-wook, echoed that theme, saying, "Immuniza-
tion campaigns can reach almost every child in poor countries.
Using them to deliver other life-saving interventions would be a
major contribution towards achieving the Millennium Development
Goal for reducing child mortality."
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), agreed at a UN summit
in 2000, are designed to halve extreme poverty and its attendant
ills by 2015.
Togo, a nation with a population of nearly 5 million and a per
capita gross domestic product (GDP) of $1,608, decreased measles
mortality among children by 99 per cent after its 2001 vaccina-
tion campaign, even though half of the children born recently
are still at risk, WHO and UNICEF said.
The success of the 2001 anti-measles campaign depended on "coun-
trywide immunization days, mobilizing neighbourhood health com-
mittees and religious and traditional leaders to enc ourage
mothers to bring their children for vaccination," the agencies
said.
In the present campaign, the incentive is the offer of long-
lasting insecticide-treated mosquito nets (LLIN), which, at US$
2 to US$ 5 each, are too expensive for poor families in Togo.
Combating and treating malaria consumes 40 per cent of Togo's
public health expenditure.
The other interventions in the campaign are vaccinations against
poliomyelitis, a paralyzing viral disease, and deworming medi-
cine to expel the intestinal parasites which can cause malnutri-
tion, severe anaemia, delayed puberty and learning problems.