Search
  1. Home
  2. West Africa
  3. Gambia

WHO, UNICEF help in third meningitis vaccination drive

    BANJUL

    A two-week mass vaccination exercise against meningitis, which kills hundreds of people in West Africa each year, began on Monday in The Gambia.

    A source in The Ministry of Health in the capital, Banjul, told IRIN the nationwide exercise was “a preventive step against meningitis rather than a response to any outbreak of the disease". About 1.4 million syringes and vaccine doses have been provided.

    According to a spokesman for the World Health Organization (WHO) in The Gambia, WHO has donated 275,000 syringes and 275,000 vaccine doses for the vaccination programme, plus US $1000 to buy fuel for the vaccination teams. The spokesman also told IRIN that the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, had made a similar contribution towards the current campaign in The Gambia, whose population is estimated at about 1.3 million people.

    Both UN agencies have traditionally supported the Gambian government’s mass health care activities.

    The exercise, which ends on 22 July, was symbolically launched by President Yahya Jammeh on 4 July at an official ceremony witnessed by the country directors of WHO and UNICEF.

    Similar campaigns were conducted in 1984 and 1997.

    This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

    Share this article

    Our ability to deliver compelling, field-based reporting on humanitarian crises rests on a few key principles: deep expertise, an unwavering commitment to amplifying affected voices, and a belief in the power of independent journalism to drive real change.

    We need your help to sustain and expand our work. Your donation will support our unique approach to journalism, helping fund everything from field-based investigations to the innovative storytelling that ensures marginalised voices are heard.

    Please consider joining our membership programme. Together, we can continue to make a meaningful impact on how the world responds to crises.

    Become a member of The New Humanitarian

    Support our journalism and become more involved in our community. Help us deliver informative, accessible, independent journalism that you can trust and provides accountability to the millions of people affected by crises worldwide.

    Join