Mass tetanus vaccination underway

The United Nations children's organisation UNICEF has begun a week-long campaign to immunise 740,000 Afghan women aged 15-45 against tetanus in four major Afghan cities as a part of a three-year plan to vaccinate over four million women who are threatened by the disease. "In Afghanistan, 90 percent of women are at risk of getting Tetanus," Doctor Francois Gasse, a senior project officer of UNICEF told IRIN on Sunday, in the Afghan capital Kabul. The first of three campaigns to be held in 2003 was launched with the help of 3000 female workers across the cities of Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad and Mazar. In partnership with UNICEF in Kabul, the campaign is being conducted by the Afghan ministry of public health and jointly supported by UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO) with active support from NGO partners. A recent study by UNICEF and the US Centers for Disease Control and Surveillance found that almost half of all deaths among Afghan women aged between 15-49 are a direct result of pregnancy and childbirth. "Around 11000 new born babies die because of tetanus in Afghanistan every year," Gasse said adding that it happened in populations where women deliver at home without a trained birth attendant and far from any health facility. UNICEF has said, these deaths could be avoided if women at risk were protected with tetanus toxoid (TT) vaccine and hygienic birth practices were observed during labour and delivery. "We are using a new un-inject device that even non-medical women can administer this pre-filled needle and syringe," said the doctor mentioning that even illiterate women with little training could administer. The seven-day campaign from February 2-8 with 3,100 volunteer workers has the backing of Afghan President Hamid Karzai who, in a televised address, appealed to women to come forward in numbers to receive the vaccination. In addition, Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of UNICEF, said the vaccine was one of the simplest and most effective ways of making inroads into the county’s horrific maternal mortality rate - currently one of the highest in the world. "Together with other basic interventions in women’s health, the tetanus toxoid (TT) vaccine has the potential to save the lives of thousands of Afghanistan’s women and their new-born children," she said.