Vaccination campaign for returnees from Tanzania

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, has begun a meningitis vaccination campaign for Burundi refugees returning from Tanzania through the Kobero entry point, in the northeast of the country.

All of the 1,100 returnees between 27 August and 5 September had been vaccinated with the help of the World Health Organisation and other partners, UNHCR confirmed.

The campaign was prompted by reports of an epidemic in Burundi refugee camps in western Tanzania as well as in some communes of northern Burundi, the UNHCR-Burundi repatriation officer, Valentina Otmacic, told IRIN.

"The UNHCR ad hoc strategy is to carry out vaccination at Kobero prior to the vaccination of all the population in the Kibondo refugee camps," she said.

Meanwhile, the northern Burundi province of Muyinga and the commune of Gisuru in Ruyigi Province, in the east of the country remained in "epidemic phase". Fifty-one new cases were reported in Muyinga between 26 August and 1 September. A total of 26 new cases had been reported in eastern Ruyigi during the same week.

One hundred doses of meningitis vaccine ordered by UNICEF had already been dispatched to Muyinga to start mass vaccination, and 300,000 further doses were expected to arrive either next week or the week after, doctor Dineke Venekamp of WHO-Burundi told IRIN.