Uganda Rolls Out Compulsory Immunization to Dispel Anti-Vaccine Myths

Patience*, a Ugandan maid, planned on taking her three-year-old son for polio immunization during the country’s mass campaigns a year ago, until her landlord’s wife told her a shocking myth.

As Ebola Approaches Zero, Immunisation Gets a Boost in West Africa

As Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia work to end Ebola, critical healthcare services damaged by the epidemic are beginning to be revitalised.

Q&A: “We Need a Decisive Win Against Polio”

Africa and Pakistan are now battling outbreaks of polio, threatening the extraordinary progress the world has made in fighting the almost-extinct disease. In the Horn of Africa, there are now 121 reported polio cases. Last year, there were 223 worldwide. Siddharth Chatterjee has served as the chief diplomat, head of strategic partnerships and international relations at the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the world’s largest humanitarian network, since June 2011.

Official Failure Kills Hundreds of Children

It came as no surprise to Dr Zulfikar Ahmad Bhutta, a leading child expert at the Aga Khan University in Karachi, that an outbreak of measles has claimed the lives of more than 300 children in Pakistan. "The tragedy was in the offing," he said, putting the blame squarely on the abysmally low coverage of routine immunisation against childhood diseases.

Africa’s Mobile Health Revolution

A nurse working in a remote clinic in Mueda, a small town in northern Mozambique’s Makonde Plateau, receives a shipment of vaccines from the national health department. Using special software on her mobile phone, she sends out a mass text message to alert mothers in the area about the availability of immunisations.

OP-ED: Polio Eradication – A Reflection on the Darfur Campaign

It was early July 2004, and Darfur was looking like a war zone - massive human displacements of an estimated one million people, ongoing skirmishes, inclement weather, a parched landscape due to the recurring droughts, and sheer misery everywhere.