Refugees

The forgotten children – Vaccinating refugee camps in the developing world

Oct 7th, 2011 12:43 PM UTC
By Lord Avebury

In my capacity as Co-Chair of the UK All Party parliamentary Group for Global Action against Childhood Pneumonia (APPG) I have worked for many years to encourage greater roll out of vaccines globally. This work has seen some great successes, such as the work of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI), who have rolled out a number of important vaccines, including the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine. This has helped to save millions of lives and will save millions more in the future.

But through the work I have undertaken and meetings I have held, there have always seemed to be one significant population ignored – refugees. Due to the displacement suffered by refugees they fall between the vaccination programmes of different countries and the disorganised and overcrowded situation in most refugee camps makes coordinated vaccine rollout extremely difficult.

One camp in particular that I have recently been investigating is the infamous Dadaab refugee camp. Located in the North Eastern Province of Kenya, on the Kenya-Somalia border, the Dadaab camp is the world’s largest refugee complex. Established in 1991 as a temporary measure to help refugees fleeing conflict in Somalia, it is now home to around 430,000 inhabitants and is estimated to grow at a rate of 1,200 new arrivals every day. The Dadaab complex now ranks as the third largest population centre in Kenya after the capital Nairobi and the city of Mombasa.

It is estimated that around forty percent of children entering the Dadaab camp have received no vaccinations at all and, despite the efforts of a range of NGOs, malnutrition, diarrhoea and respiratory tract infections remain widespread in the complex. With such a high concentration of people, hygiene standards are extremely low and the complex suffers from a critical shortage of clean water.

But there is hope for the forgotten children of these camps as UNICEF are providing the latest vaccines against some of the biggest killers for children in the developing world. UNICEF are supplying vaccinations against pneumococcal disease, the leading killer of children under 5, and also against rotavirus, the second biggest killer of small children.

This is reassuring, but is by no means enough. We must develop a coordinated response to protect other refugee children in Africa, such as those in new camps for the 35,000 in Ethiopia fleeing the attacks on civilians in Sudan’s disputed Blue Nile state.

Many of the illnesses that spread through refugee camps are preventable through simple vaccines and with the continuing displacement of peoples globally it is time that a body was established with responsibility for rolling out vaccines to refugees. This is something the APPG will be looking into going forward – giving a voice to the unfortunate children who end up in these camps.

Lord Avebury is Co-Chair of the UK All Party Parliamentary Group for Global Action Against Childhood Pneumonia.

Zimbabwean Children Flee to South Africa

Jan 28th, 2009 1:49 PM UTC
By Virginia Simmons

I read this story in Sunday’s New York Times on children fleeing Zimbabwe “for lives just as desolate” in South Africa, and wanted to share it here on the ONE Blog.

Below are some excerpts but you can read the full piece on their site.

With their nation in a prolonged sequence of crises, more unaccompanied children and women than ever are joining the rush of desperate Zimbabweans illegally crossing the frontier at the Limpopo River, according to the police, local officials and aid workers.

What they are escaping is a broken country where half the people are going hungry, most schools and hospitals are closed or dysfunctional and a cholera epidemic has taken a toll in the thousands. Yet they are arriving in a place where they are unwelcome and are resented as rivals for jobs. Last year, Zimbabweans were part of the quarry in a spate of mob attacks against foreigners….

South Africa’s national police force is exasperated by the crimes… most victims do not file complaints. After all, they are here illegally, unless remaining in the Showgrounds. “Last week, I had 1,500 ready for deportation,” he said.

The captain stood up, walking over to a computer screen. “We keep photos of the refugees killed near the border.”…

Mention of the children seemed to feed his exasperation. “Street kids, more all the time,” he said. “They come in as if they are playing in a game.”

He asked, “What do we do about these kids?”

-Virginia Simmons