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UN fund offers finance for emergency measles campaign in Somalia
Tuesday July 15, 2014
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UNITED NATIONS-- The UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) has allocated 1.4 million U.S. dollars for an emergency campaign to combat measles outbreak in Somalia, which has already left thousands of children at risk of disability and death, a UN spokesman said Monday.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the funding will be used to vaccinate an estimated half a million children under five years of age in the worst affected areas of Banadir, Lower Juba and Puntland, UN Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq said at the daily briefing.
There were more than 1,350 suspected cases of measles in March and April -- four times more than the number during the same period last year, and nearly 1,000 cases were reported in May alone, according to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF).
The spokesman noted that three quarters of cases were reported in children under the age of five.
The measles outbreak is particularly worrisome given the lack of access to health services in the country. Somalia faces some of the worst health indicators in the world, with only 30 percent of people having access to a nurse or medical doctor.
A nationwide catch-up campaign will be conducted in the next six months as part of the overall measles control strategy. The disease is one of the leading killers of young children in the country, where one in five children die before their fifth birthday, according to the UN.
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