In a statement issued in Nairobi, UNICEF said tens of thousands of children and women living in over 80 camps along the Mogadishu- Afgoye corridor will receive a package of critical life saving interventions this week.
"About 95 percent of Somali children under the age of five have not received the full recommended course of vaccinations," said UNICEF's Representative to Somalia, Christian Balslev-Olesen.
"And if you consider that 10 percent of the country's population has had to flee their homes -- with these numbers increasing everyday -- then we have to find effective means of delivering services to these people. This is why UNICEF and its partners have organized campaigns like this one to reach every child."
The UN children's fund said children under age five will receive measles, polio, diphtheria, tetanus and tuberculosis vaccines. In addition, they will receive vitamin A, which helps boost their immunity against illness.
UNICEF said the weeklong campaign also targets women of reproductive age. About 56,000 will receive iron supplementation and tetanus toxoid immunization.
Hundreds of thousands of Somalis, who fled fighting in Mogadishu, have gone to the Afgoye region, about 30 km south of the capital.
With the fall of Somalia's government in 1991,the country's health system has faced severe challenges in providing essential services to its population.
However, UNICEF said recent data coming out of the country indicate that using campaigns -- essentially setting up temporary and mobile health delivery points -- has contributed to significant reductions in the number of children dying from measles and polio.
"If the United Nations is to remain relevant and improve the lives of Somalis, then we need to be more aggressive in how we reach children who need us,"Balslev-Olesen said.
The approach is cost effective. UNICEF and WHO believe that they can reach 3.5 million children and women in the next two years for as little as 15 U.S. dollars per person per year.
Somalia has some of the worst social indicators for children in the world -- one in eight children dies before his fifth birthday; one in three is chronically malnourished; hardly a third of families have access to clean drinking water; just 30 percent of children go to school and on average people only live to the age of 47.
SOURCE: Xinhua, December 3, 2007