Immunization has eradicated polio as an endemic disease in Somalia, showing the crippling disease can be defeated with sufficient funds and effort, the United Nations said on Monday.
“If polio can be stopped in Somalia, it can be stopped anywhere,” said Carol Bellamy, executive director of the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
Bellamy announced the achievement in a statement appealing for $130 million to plug a funding gap for a global eradication program to eliminate the virus by 2005.
Health care is a luxury for the seven million population of Somalia, a chaotic Horn of Africa country that has had no central government for more than 12 years.
About 224 Somali children in every 1,000 die of various diseases before they reach the age of five, the U.N. body said.
Huge challenges
Since 1996, the “Kick Polio out of Africa” campaign has reduced new polio cases across the continent from 205 a day to just 388 for the whole of 2003, a UNICEF statement said. A total of 758 polio cases were reported worldwide in 2003.
The U.N. Children’s Fund and World Health Organization, launching an annual vaccination drive in Somalia on Monday, said they would have militiamen as bodyguards for the staff who will be delivering the inoculations to all children under five years.
Religious leaders and clan elders have been part of the campaign and spread word of the vaccinations well ahead of time.
“Somalis are determined to immunize their children, despite the huge challenges they face,” said Jesper Morch, UNICEF’s representative in the country.
The campaign to eradicate the paralyzing disease in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, has suffered from boycotts by some Islamic leaders who insisted vaccines had been contaminated.
The crippling disease still endemic in Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Niger and Egypt.
