Angola embarks on massive child vaccination drive
Three-year-old Josefina Beamgh screams as the needle punctures her tiny back. A drop of blood spouts to the surface and the terrified child drops to the ground, distraught but safe from the scourge of measles.
“Do the next one,” Kisi Josefina Beamgh, the child’s mother, tells a nurse as she grabs one of Josefina’s four wide-eyed siblings. One by one, each receives the jab as well as an oral polio vaccination and Vitamin A supplement.
The scene was repeated throughout Angola’s capital Luanda on Wednesday as the southwestern African nation began one of its largest childhood vaccination and anti-malaria campaigns since winning independence from Portugal in 1975.
The vaccination drive, funded by UNICEF, Western governments and several other groups and donors, is aimed at reaching more than 3.5 million children under the age of 5 as it is extended to other parts of Angola in coming weeks.
Although the need for a vaccination programme has long been clear - Angola has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world - it was only with the end of a bitter 27-year civil war in 2002 that it became feasible.
The war between the ruling Marxist-influenced MPLA and its opponents, primarily western-backed UNITA, crippled the country’s health system and left millions, especially children, vulnerable to disease.
Angola’s leaders, riding an economic boom in the oil-rich nation, have embraced the campaign as a demonstration of a commitment to improve basic health care and reinvest in social programmes for the country’s estimated 13 million people.
The MPLA government, which is expected to call Angola’s first election since 1992 this year or next, is often accused by critics of neglecting common people despite the riches generated by being sub-Saharan Africa’s second largest oil producer.
The needs are clear. One-quarter of all Angolan infants and toddlers now die before the age of 5, often from measles, malnutrition or malaria. Polio also has become a threat after resurfacing in the region last year.
In addition to administering vaccinations, health workers plan to treat children suffering from intestinal parasites and hand out vitamin supplements to boost immunity.
Insecticide-treated mosquito nets will be provided to almost a million households to protect young children from malaria, which killed nearly 5,000 Angolan children last year.
“This is a public-health first in which five life-saving and life-enhancing measures are being provided in one consolidated campaign,” said Angela Kearney, UNICEF representative in Angola.
“This kind of broad-spectrum protection can give children’s survival in Angola a much-needed boost and do it very cost effectively.”
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