A Somali refugee kid gets vaccinated at a pediatric vaccination center at Hagadere refugee site within the Dadaab refugee complex in Kenya's northeast province on August 1, 2011.
Saturday, August 06, 2011
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UNICEF has launched a vaccination campaign for Somali children and families in a refugee camp in northern Kenya following widespread famine and drought in Somalia. Kenya's health ministry and the UN agency for children began the campaign for children living in the host communities around Dadaab refugee camp in northern Kenya, reports indicate.
The UNICEF campaign will target 202,665 children under five, with measles and polio vaccines, together with Vitamin A and de-worming tablets.
Somali refugees arrive in Dadaab at an average rate of 1,300 per day, having survived the long trek from Somalia, the agency said on its website.
The total population of the three camps near Dadaab is now more than 400,000. Nearly half the children who make it to the camps from southern Somalia are malnourished.
There are disturbing reports of children dying along the way from Somalia or just as they arrive at the camp in Kenya.
UNICEF says it has increased supplies of ready-to-use therapeutic food to hospitals and nutrition stabilization centers in the Dadaab camps and surrounding host communities for the treatment of malnutrition in children under five.
According to reports, an estimated 3.7 million people in Somalia -- around a third of the population -- are on the brink of starvation and millions more in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda have been affected by the worst drought in the region in 60 years.