No child too far.
ARTICLE BY RASHINI SURIYAARACHCHI, UNICEF.ORG.AU
UNICEF believes no child should die of a preventable disease. That’s why we provide vaccines for 45% of the world’s children.
Together with our partners, we support vaccination programmes in over 95 countries. It’s a huge job that’s only possible through the sheer determination of thousands of volunteers and health professionals.
These 14 photos show the incredible lengths they’ll go to keep children safe from disease.
Health workers climb mountains
War is the perfect environment for disease to spread. With many hospitals and clinics in Yemen bombed or abandoned, it’s estimated one child dies every ten minutes from a preventable disease.UNICEF and our partners are responding at a massive scale. Nationwide door-to-door campaigns this year will vaccinate up to 5 million children against polio. Mobile health teams are reaching children wherever they are, including in places where other health services have been cut off by the fighting.
Each vaccinator has incredible resolve in crossing battle lines, mountains and valleys to vaccinate children. More children die from preventable diseases in Yemen than in the violence, so we simply can’t afford to stop.
Diseases can also spread with deadly speed in the aftermath of a natural disaster, when children struggle to find safe drinking water, toilets and soap.
After the Nepal earthquakes in 2015, UNICEF supported a nationwide immunisation campaign to protect 3.6 million children from the risk of a polio outbreak. That meant trekking through mountainous terrain to reach the children hardest hit at the epicentre of the quake.
Najeeba works hard every day towards a vision: a world where all children, everywhere are protected against preventable diseases.Since 1980, Najeeba and thousands of other UNICEF-sponsored health workers have helped quadruple immunisation rates for children worldwide, saving up to three million lives a year.
They cross rivers
UNICEF procured 2.5 billion vaccines in 2016. Their journeys start in our supply warehouses and end in every corner of the world.No matter where they are, children who are vaccinated have a better chance to survive, thrive and reach their potential. That’s why UNICEF helps vaccines get to those hardest to reach – including the children on the other side of this river.
The persistence of health workers in India has paid off – the country finally eradicated polio in 2014 and wiped out maternal neonatal tetanus in 2015.
Getting vaccines to remote communities isn’t enough. To stay effective, vaccines need to be kept cold in a special carrier. If something goes wrong, the long, arduous journey could go to waste.It’s not an easy job but we can’t give up. Despite progress, 16,000 children under five still die every day – usually because they don’t get the health care and live-saving vaccines they need.
They drive down long, lonely roads
Even when there’s not an emergency, networks of UNICEF-sponsored health workers help vaccinate children who aren’t being reached. Where poverty, disadvantage and distance break down access to health services, these volunteers and staff bridge the gap. Equipping locals to vaccinate children is a sustainable, long-term strategy that benefits and empowers communities.
They travel by boat..
This team is one of thousands that has helped eliminate polio in 122 countries since 1988. It’s an incredible achievement made possible through one of the most cost-effective ways of protecting children’s lives: vaccines.
“My duty is very important,” says Johrul, a vaccine porter in Bangladesh. “All these vaccine carriers need to be delivered properly.”
…and by air.
Even before conflict broke out in South Sudan, the young country was one of the most difficult places in the world to deliver vaccines. Roads are unreliable and travel is dangerous.When all else fails, UNICEF helps run Rapid Response Missions. We use whatever means necessary to reach the most desperate communities in the least accessible parts of South Sudan. By foot, by boat and by air, we reach children with the essential health services they need to survive and stay safe from disease.
They work on the go