MASSIVE UN POLIO IMMUNIZATION CAMPAIGN UNDERWAY IN WEST AFRICA

MASSIVE UN POLIO IMMUNIZATION CAMPAIGN UNDERWAY IN WEST AFRICA
New York, Feb 27 2009 2:00PM

Some 53 million children under the age of five, including every girl and boy in Nigeria, have been targeted by a mass polio immunization campaign across West Africa, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) announced today.

The door-to-door polio eradication drive is planned to sweep through eight countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Togo, and Nigeria, aiming to reach every child even in the remotest of areas.

The campaign, employing 162,000 trained immunizers, will attempt to stop last year's outbreak which hit northern Nigeria and spread to six countries in West Africa after the wild polio virus had already re-infected Niger in 2007, as well as Chad and Cameroon in Central Africa.

"The highest priority was to reach every child in Nigeria, which was one of the four endemic countries, and in the high-risk areas across the region," said Miranda Eeles, a spokesperson for UNICEF.

The total cost of the campaign is $29 million for the seven countries, with an additional $38 million for Nigeria, including the cost of the vaccine, operational costs, social mobilization and surveillance.

The campaign, which kicked off today and started earlier this month in Ghana, involves the health ministries of all the countries, as well as support from UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO) and Rotary International, among others. It is being organized as part of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.

Contracted through contaminated food, water and faeces, polio is a highly infectious and incurable viral disease, which mainly affects children under five, attacking the nervous system. One in 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis, usually in the legs, and among those paralyzed, five to 10 per cent die when their respiratory muscles become immobilized.
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UN-BACKED WORKSHOP TO BOOST THE STATUS OF POLICEWOMEN IN CÔTE D’IVOIRE

UN-BACKED WORKSHOP TO BOOST THE STATUS OF POLICEWOMEN IN CÔTE D'IVOIRE
New York, Feb 25 2009 7:00PM

Improving the status and effectiveness of women, whose numbers have risen steadily in the past decade, in the police force of the Côte d'Ivoire is the subject of a new training course organized by the United Nations mission known as UNOCI in the West African country.

Some 30 Ivorian police officials are taking the course – created by the UN Police (UNPOL) and the Gender Unit of UNOCI and financed by the German cooperation agency, GTZ – which examines "the reception, work and environment of women in the national police, a milieu previously exclusively for men," according to the mission.

Women now number around 1,700, which is around 10 per cent of national police in Côte d'Ivoire, says UNOCI, which is assisting the implementation of the peace process in the country, following its division into a Government-controlled south and a rebel-dominated north in 2002.

At the launch of the three-day training session, which took place in the city of Grand-Bassam, east of the capital Abidjan, the head of UNOCI's Gender Unit, Eva Dalak, said that the seminar could bring about a better integration of women into the national police.

Reaching that goal, she said, depended on individual responsibility, on leadership and the engagement of participants, who would develop a follow-up plan of action during the course.
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