Vaccination campaign progresses, despite fighting

Despite continuing fighting in parts of Burundi, the vaccination campaign launched earlier this week is "moving forward as planned", Susanna Campbell, the communications officer for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), told IRIN on Friday. "People seem to be able to get to vaccination centres," she said from the capital, Bujumbura. UNICEF had appealed to Hutu rebels and the government forces to observe "days of tranquillity" to allow for the vaccination of millions of Burundians. This call was being supported by a widely disseminated radio message from the children, who were appealing for the observation of "a temporary truce" so they could live, UNICEF reported on Wednesday. Immunisation coverage rates had been falling in Burundi, it added, since the conflict began in 1993, with measles coverage reaching only 54 percent in 2001. In 2000, over 20,000 children had suffered in a serious measles epidemic, it said, adding that a poor health system and the difficulty in accessing much of the population were the reasons for these low vaccination rates. This had made it necessary, UNICEF said, to vaccinate such a large percentage of the population during the current campaign. The campaign, which began on Monday, is in two phases, with the first ending on 28 June. The second will run from 23 to 26 July, and altogether the campaign seek to vaccinate 3.3 million children between the ages of nine months and 14 years against measles, and 627,720 children between 0-59 months against polio. UNICEF said the campaign also aimed to provide 1.2 million children between six and 59 months with Vitamin A supplements to help boost their immune systems. Measles attacks the system and skin surfaces (gut, cornea and lungs) and, UNICEF said, could lead to respiratory infections, diarrhoea and blindness. It added that measles could cause children with weak immune systems to die, "and thus poses a great threat to the 50 percent of Burundian children who suffer from chronic malnutrition". UNICEF said that because of the recent presence of the wild poliovirus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the disease "could still be transmitted" to Burundian children across the shared border. At least 600,000 children in eight provinces that either border the DRC or had registered low coverage rates were expected to receive the oral polio vaccine, UNICEF said. ECHO, the Humanitarian Aid Office of the EC, is covering most of the cost of this operation, with a contribution of at least 1.7 million euros (US $ 1.6 million).