{"id":16734,"date":"2025-05-19T20:57:26","date_gmt":"2025-05-19T20:57:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/?p=16734"},"modified":"2025-05-20T10:00:47","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T10:00:47","slug":"somalia-launches-nationwide-vaccination-drive-to-combat-measles-polio-and-pneumonia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/2025\/05\/19\/somalia-launches-nationwide-vaccination-drive-to-combat-measles-polio-and-pneumonia\/","title":{"rendered":"Somalia launches nationwide vaccination drive to combat measles, polio, pneumonia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"selectionShareable\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>MOGADISHU &#8212;\u00a0<\/strong>Somalia launched a nationwide vaccination campaign on Monday to combat measles, polio, and pneumonia, targeting more than 3 million children in the country.<\/p>\n<p class=\"selectionShareable\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">The World Health Organization (WHO), which launched the week-long campaign in collaboration with Somali federal and regional governments, said in a statement that the campaign&#8217;s goal is &#8220;to protect children and vulnerable communities from deadly preventable diseases&#8221; in the Horn of Africa.<\/p>\n<p class=\"selectionShareable\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Vaccine Alliance (GAVI) is supporting the campaign, which aims to vaccinate 3.1 million Somali children under the age of five against measles, polio, and pneumonia, the statement said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"selectionShareable\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">Somalia continues to face long-standing security challenges, making it difficult to provide vaccines to vulnerable children, according to the WHO.<\/p>\n<p class=\"selectionShareable\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">Since 2014, no poliovirus has been detected in Somalia, and the African continent was declared poliovirus-free in 2020.<\/p>\n<p class=\"selectionShareable\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">However, the WHO reports that the country&#8217;s health infrastructure has been devastated by conflict, poverty, and climate crises, and polio strains continue to threaten children.<\/p>\n<p class=\"selectionShareable\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">Part of Somalia, identified by the Global Polio Eradication Programme as one of seven &#8220;consequential geographies,&#8221; continues to face difficulties in controlling polio outbreaks due to overpopulation, fragile health systems, and ongoing conflict.<\/p>\n<p class=\"selectionShareable\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">In April, Somalia introduced two lifesaving vaccines into its national immunization program: pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) and rotavirus vaccine, both of which aim to prevent pneumonia and diarrhoea in children.<\/p>\n<p class=\"selectionShareable\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">It said the coordinated effort is a significant step forward in the country&#8217;s efforts to reduce the prevalence of measles, pneumonia, and rotavirus-related diarrhoea, which are three of the leading causes of disease and death among Somali children.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>Source: Anadolu Agency\u00a0 \u00a0 Origin: <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aa.com.tr\/en\/africa\/somalia-launches-nationwide-vaccination-drive-to-combat-measles-polio-pneumonia\/3572883\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener sponsored ugc noreferrer\">view original<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MOGADISHU &#8212;\u00a0Somalia launched a nationwide vaccination campaign on Monday to combat measles, polio, and pneumonia, targeting more than 3 million children in the country. The World Health Organization (WHO), which launched the week-long campaign in collaboration with Somali federal and regional governments, said in a statement that the campaign&#8217;s goal is &#8220;to protect children and &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16735,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-health-cluster","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16734"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16750,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16734\/revisions\/16750"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}