War fears fail to halt fight against polio

DESPITE the growing likelihood of a US-led war in Iraq, 14,000 health workers will fan out across the country next week to immunise more than four million children against polio.

"No matter what the global situation, we cannot shrink from the ongoing work of reaching out to help them,” said Unicef Executive Director Carol Bellamy. “Amid many distractions, we must all keep the children of Iraq uppermost in our minds and do everything we can to protect them.”

Bellamy said the disease crossed borders easily, so it was essential that the health workers reach every child. Although there was a major outbreak of polio in Iraq in 1999, increased vaccination has meant there have been no cases since January, 2000.

Unicef also supports a programme to speed up vaccinations against measles, which kills more children than any other disease in Iraq. UN officials said as many as half-a-million Iraqi children under five may not have been immunised. “Finding these children is an important undertaking,” said Carel de Rooy, Unicef’s Iraq representative. “We have volunteers poring over vaccination records and going door-to-door to locate them and make sure they are immunised.”

One Iraqi child in eight dies before the age of five, while a third are malnourished and a quarter have no access to safe drinking water.