UAE, Unicef combine for Pakistan health campaign
By IANSThursday, September 23, 2010
Abu Dhabi, Sep 23 (IANS/WAM) The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the Unicef Thursday signed a deal to carry out a vaccination programme for over 850,000 Pakistani women.
The partnership, between UAE’s Red Crescent Authority (RCA) and the Unicef, against the spread of measles and tetanus, targets 850,000 women “of reproductive age” and children aged six months to five years, a statement said.
The immunisation programme will cost 1.8 million dirhams and will cover Tahata and Dawood areas in Pakistan, Mohammed Khalifa Al Qamzi, RCA secretary general, said.
Al Qamzi said about 3.5 million children in Pakistan were in desperate need of food and health care. “The RCA will stay for years in Pakistan to contribute to reconstruction efforts.”
The programme will target women and children vulnerable to communicable diseases like diarrhoea, tuberculosis and even malnutrition at times of floods.
Unicef Wednesday issued a report on the flood emergency in Pakistan saying, “with over 10 million children hit by the flooding, the humanitarian crisis in Pakistan is so massive that the actual scale continues to elude the imagination of the public across the world”.
–IANS/WAM
