FR
EN
AR
A major funding gap is hampering the United Nation’s ability to respond to a measles outbreak in Lebanon, allowing the disease to spread and “putting children’s lives at risk,” UNICEF’s Lebanon representative said Thursday.
UNICEF, the U.N. Children’s Fund, is appealing to donors for $5 million in order to prevent the spread of the measles outbreak and to stop other communicable diseases from spreading, Tanya Chapuisat, UNICEF’s representative in Lebanon, told The Daily Star.
The Health Ministry declared a measles outbreak in several areas of the country in March. UNICEF counted some 184 measles cases in the first 12 weeks of 2018 alone – a sharp increase from the total 130 cases recorded in 2017, a statement from the agency said Thursday.
UNICEF requires funds to “replenish vaccine stocks” and reach children in remote areas of the country, Chapuisat was quoted as saying.
“With current funds, we can’t increase our efforts in reaching vulnerable children in isolated areas ... and we can’t remove some of the obstacles we know are stopping children from being immunized,” the representative explained.
“If we don’t react now, more serious epidemics will hit.”
Chapuisat told The Daily Star that among the most vulnerable children in the current measles outbreak were Lebanese children whose parents feared being charged fees by local immunization clinics – despite UNICEF providing free vaccines to patients across the country.
For low-income families, she said, the additional charges at private clinics are a major hurdle preventing children from getting vaccinated.
Nevertheless, Chapuisat urged parents across Lebanon to take their children to medical clinics for the required vaccinations, in order to contain the current measles outbreak. She emphasized that parents hit with fees at private clinics should inform Health Ministry officials.
“Immunization is free and has to be free; that is every child’s right,” Chapuisat said in the statement, adding that UNICEF was coordinating with the World Health Organization and the Lebanese government to ensure this.
Source : the Daily Star
