765,000 Syrian Children Living In Hard To Reach Areas Wait For Polio Vaccine

The United Nations needs "regular access" to vaccinate 765,000 Syrian children living in hard to reach places against polio in a bid to stop the disease spreading further in the country, according to a report released today by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund.

In October 2013, the first case of polio in Syria since 1999 was reported. There are now 38 confirmed cases of polio in the Middle East, with 36 of those inside Syria, most of them in Deir Ez Zour.

WHO and UNICEF say that the first phase of the biggest polio vaccination campaign ever undertaken in the Middle East has now been completed, with 25 million children under the age of five having been reached in seven countries. Further polio immunization campaigns will be repeated across the region.

In Syria, further vaccination will take place in parts of the country in August 2014 and there will be two national mass polio campaigns in October and November of this year.
Juliette Touma, UNICEF Regional Office for the Middle East and North Africa in Amman, said that safe, unhindered access is needed to reach all children.

According to the report, polio vaccination coverage in Syria has dramatically fallen since the start of the conflict – from 99% before fighting began in March 2011 to just 52% in 2012. Many factors are to blame, including disruption of routine immunization programmes, severe damage to Syria's health systems and continuous movement of the population to escape the conflict. In addition, vaccination supplies and equipment to store it in have been lost, damaged or completely put out of action.

SHOTLIST:
22 JULY 2014, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND

Exterior of Palais des Nations
Panel
Journalists
Press room

SOUNDBITE (English) Juliette Touma, UNICEF Regional Office for the Middle East and North Africa in Amman:
"Right now we're talking about 38 confirmed cases of polio in the region. Thirty-six of those cases are inside Syria, most of them are in Deir Ez Zour and the rest are in
other countries."

SOUNDBITE (English) Juliette Touma, UNICEF Regional Office for the Middle East and North Africa in Amman:
"We estimate that there are 765,000 children inside Syria who live in areas that are hard to reach. And as long as we don't get full and regular access to these children,
the chances of polio spreading further will continue to exist, which means more children inside Syria and beyond will continue to be at risk of being paralyzed by polio."

SOUNDBITE (English) Juliette Touma, UNICEF Regional Office for the Middle East and North Africa in Amman:
"What we've been doing is we've been doing cross-line operations inside Syria, which means that our teams, including the vaccinators, they would cross the line of fire
inside Syria to reach areas that are under the opposition control and vaccinate the children. This is what we hope we will be able to continue to do in the second phase of the campaign. We need more of those cross-line operations to be able to reach more children. And for that, we do negotiations and the result is that we get to these
children. But it has not been enough and we need to do much more of that."

DURATION: 01:37