WHO, Unicef Help in Third Meningitis Vaccination Drive

UN Integrated Regional Information Networks
NEWS
July 8, 2002
Posted to the web July 8, 2002


A two-week mass vaccination exercise against meningitis, which kills
hundreds of people in West Africa each year, began on Monday in The Gambia.

A source in The Ministry of Health in the capital, Banjul, told IRIN the
nationwide exercise was "a preventive step against meningitis rather than a
response to any outbreak of the disease". About 1.4 million syringes and
vaccine doses have been provided.

According to a spokesman for the World Health Organization (WHO) in The
Gambia, WHO has donated 275,000 syringes and 275,000 vaccine doses for the
vaccination programme, plus US $1000 to buy fuel for the vaccination teams.
The spokesman also told IRIN that the UN Children's Fund, UNICEF, had made a
similar contribution towards the current campaign in The Gambia, whose
population is estimated at about 1.3 million people.

Both UN agencies have traditionally supported the Gambian government's mass
health care activities.

The exercise, which ends on 22 July, was symbolically launched by President
Yahya Jammeh on 4 July at an official ceremony witnessed by the country
directors of WHO and UNICEF.

Similar campaigns were conducted in 1984 and 1997.


There is a time in the life of every problem when it is big enough to see,
yet small enough to solve.    -Mike- Levitt-


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