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STORY: SOMALIA / MEASLES VACCINATION
TRT: 01:51
SOURCE: UNICEF
RESTRICTIONS: PLEASE CREDIT UNICEF ON SCREEN
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 24 APRIL 2017, BAIDOA, SOMALIA
24 APRIL 2017, BEERTA MUURI CAMPS, BAIDOA, SOMALIA
1. Wide shots, people gathering at vaccination post
2. Med shot, measles outbreak response banner
3. Wide shot, parents and children in line to receive vaccinations
4. Wide shot, child holding mother’s hand
5. Close up, child
6. Close up, children waiting in line
7. Wide shot, health worker prepares vaccinations
8. Wide shot, child being vaccinated
9. Med shot, health worker marking a vaccinated child
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Jayne Mbakaya, Programme Manager, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF):
“We already know of at least 16 suspected cases in Baidoa which means that the true numbers are surely much higher. We know that measles can spread quickly in overcrowded displacement camps and IDP settlements of which there are so many in Baidoa and we know only too well from 2011 famine that measles combined with malnutrition and displacement is a lethal combination especially for children.”
11. Wide shot, child being vaccinated
12. Med shot, child being vaccinated
13. Wide shot, child being vaccinated
14. Wide shot, mothers and children sitting in vaccination post
15. Med shot, child leaning on mother
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said some 30,000 children are being vaccinated against measles this week in an emergency campaign in Baidoa, a town at the heart of one of Somalia’s areas hardest-hit by the drought.
UNICEF many of the children had displaced by the drought crisis and have never been immunized before. They come from remote areas health workers often cannot reach because of a decades-old conflict that has ravaged the impoverished country in the Horn of Africa.
UNICEF noted that almost 5,700 cases of suspected measles have been reported across the country this year, topping the total number of cases in 2016. Measles, a viral respiratory infection that spreads through air and contact with infected mucus and saliva, thrives in congested, unsanitary displacement camps, which have mushroomed across the town and surrounding areas. The Fund said more than 100,000 people have come to Baidoa in search of assistance, including at least 70,000 in March alone.
UNICEF’s Programme Manager Jayne Mbakaya said there were at least 16 suspected cases of measles in Baidoa “which means that the true numbers are surely much higher.” She said measles could spread quickly in overcrowded displacement camps adding that “measles combined with malnutrition and displacement is a lethal combination especially for children.”
The threat of famine once again looms large over Somalia with over half the population acutely food insecure. UNICEF said water-borne and infectious diseases like cholera and measles are spreading, and up to a million children are, or will be acutely malnourished this year, with one in five requiring life-saving treatment.
UNICEF said the Baidoa campaign is part of an effort to vaccinate about 110,000 displaced children below 5 years old in hotspots across south central Somalia, and another 250,000 children in Somaliland, against the deadly contagious disease by the end of May.
