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DEVELOPMENT REPORT - August 12, 2002: Campaign Against
Tetanus
By Jill Moss
This is the VOA Special English Development Report.
The United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, has launched a new program
to protect thousands of women and their babies against tetanus. Organisms
that enter the body through a cut or wound cause the disease. It can
lead to serious muscle problems. Tetanus can also cause difficulty opening
the mouth or swallowing. Doctors call this condition lockjaw.
The UNICEF campaign will target women in poor
communities in Africa that are difficult to reach. Recently, health
workers gave injections of vaccine medicine to more than one-hundred-thousand
women in two areas of Mali. The vaccine will protect the women and their
newly born children from tetanus. Women at risk must receive at least
three injections of the vaccine over a one-year period to be fully protected.
Health workers use a special device called a
UniJect to give the vaccination. This device includes a needle and the
amount of medicine needed for one patient. UNICEF says that people with
little or no medical training can successfully use the Uniject device.
For example, teachers and community workers can be trained in areas
where there are no health centers. UNICEF says more people can by vaccinated
in a short time by using temporary health workers instead of medical
experts.
Marc Vergara is a spokesperson for UNICEF. He
says the Uniject device has been in use for about twelve years. The
tetanus vaccination has been used for about seventy years. And international
campaigns to protect people against disease have been carried out for
many years. Mister Vergara says this is the first time all three have
been combined.
Mister Vergara says the UNICEF campaign will
extend to other parts of Mali later this year. If it succeeds, UNICEF
and other aid organizations will plan similar campaigns in other countries.
They include Ghana, Somalia, Sudan, and Uganda.
UNICEF reports that tetanus killed two-hundred-thousand
newly born babies and thirty-thousand women in fifty-seven developing
countries last year. Ninety percent of all tetanus cases are in twenty-seven
countries in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. As many as seventy
percent of all babies who develop the disease die in their first months
of life.
This VOA Special English Development Report
was written by Jill Moss.
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