Measles vaccination among drought-stricken people

Diramu Arero had waited since early morning along with dozens of other mothers and their babies in front of Tuka's small health centre in drought-stricken southern Ethiopia to get her child vaccinated against measles. Having lost her youngest child to the disease during the last major drought five years ago, Diramu was determined this time to get her little one, Dinku, jabbed. She had left her four other children at home and walked two hours to reach the health centre in Tuka, some 29 km north of Moyale, a town that straddles the Ethiopian border with Kenya. "My son is two years old, and with all my cows having died during the past two months, I have no more milk to give him. Now I am afraid he might get weak and get diseases," said the 44-year-old mother, who now collects firewood from the bushes and sells it to survive. Like another 1.5 million children under the age of five in southern and southeastern Ethiopia, Dinku was vaccinated against measles in an emergency campaign aimed at averting mass deaths among young ones weakened by hunger. "This emergency campaign is a lesson we learned from the previous droughts. In 2000, we lost hundreds of children in a few weeks because of measles. We want to avoid this happening again," said Bruno Maes, a senior programme officer for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), which organised the campaign. "Drought and measles is a death cocktail. With diarrhoea, it is the main killer during a drought." During the last major drought in 2000, one-fifth of all deaths of children under the age of five were measles-related. During the last six months, at least 34 have already died in eastern Ethiopia. The first cases appeared in the southern Bale Region and in neighbouring Moyale District, where the town of Tuka is located. "Two young children died a few days ago. We fear it might be measles. So we have to move fast to avoid a spread of the disease like last time," explained Mohamed Lur Abdulahi, the health officer of Moyale district. He said the vaccination coverage in the area was only 9 percent.

Dead livestock litter the road outside Goraye, southern Ethiopia, and health authorities fear the carcasses might contaminate the water in the surrounding ponds.

Dry area Measles is only one of several problems Ethiopians are currently facing, after the near total failure of two successive rainy seasons over the last year. The area around Tuka, a dry, dusty village in the southernmost part of Ethiopia's Oromiya Region, some 750 km from the capital, Addis Ababa, and 30 km from the Kenyan border, is at the heart of a devastating drought that has left an estimated 1.7 million Ethiopians struggling to survive with difficult access to water. Most traditional water sources, including hand-dug wells or ponds, have already dried up, leaving boreholes as the only source of water in the area. However, one-third of the region's water wells are broken or unusable, according to UNICEF, and at least 637,000 people depend on emergency water deliveries. "We are starting to see more patients come in with drought-related diseases like diarrhoea and signs of severe malnutrition, which is uncommon here, as the pastoralists usually always have milk to give to their children," said Derese Duguma, one of the trained nurses at the health centre. "But the patients have absolutely nothing to pay. And we are very short of drugs, so any increase will be difficult to cope with." Approximately one in five children in the whole region is malnourished, according to the last regional survey. "I have nothing anymore. Three years ago I lost five cows. Now, 20 died," said Diramu, who looks much older than her 44 years. "If at least someone could help me to buy a donkey to carry the firewood I collect every day. But there is no one to help us." Outside the village, rotting carcasses of cattle line the road. The lack of water and drought-related diseases have killed thousands of livestock in the last two months. Such deaths are the first signs of what could be a disaster. Livestock has lost 60 percent of its value, directly affecting the pastoral communities living in this area, who rely on cattle, sheep, goats and camels for food and income. Food prices have gone up by as much as 50 percent. Seven hours’ drive north along the road from Tuka is the village of Goraye, some 550 km south of Addis Ababa. Outside the village, the humanitarian agency CARE has hastily put up a slaughterhouse. Cattle that about to die are slaughtered here every day, and the meat is distributed to the community. "Since we have started, we slaughter up to 100 animals a day, when they are too weak to walk," explained Gilma Liben of CARE. However, the onset of the rains is bringing fear instead of relief. "With all these carcasses strewn all over the place, the rain might contaminate the wells and the ponds where people used to get water and bring waterborne diseases," said Diide Tadi, the local health official. "For the last five years, we have had these on-and-off rains. They are unable to solve the crisis. On the contrary, we now fear a malaria outbreak, and the weak cattle will obviously die even quicker, with the sudden drop in temperature," explained Dejene Benti, the local representative of the International Medical Corps. In Oromiya and Somali regions alone, the UN needs more than US $10 million - not just to avert hunger but to buy more emergency water tankers, repair broken down pumps, drill new boreholes and finance the measles-immunisation campaign. Only $5 million of the required amount is currently available. Outside the village, a man walks with his small, skinny herd on the baked red earth, looking for pasture. "I can't remember having experienced such a severe drought in the last five years," said 25-year-old Gaarso Lema, who added that he sometimes had to walk between 10 hours and 15 hours to find some pasture. He used to have a herd of 45 cows, but only five are left now. "If the rain doesn't come for at least a month, we are just going to die," he said.