13 Jun 2011

Battle to protect Kenya’s children from deadly diseases

Save the Children tells Channel 4 News how British aid is helping to save lives in Africa, where common childhood illnesses are still major killers.

Bill Gates' wealth

Andrew Wander from Save the Children has been in Wajir, north east Kenya, seeing firsthand the benefits of vaccination programmes.

The charity is working with the Kenyan government to immunise some of the east African country’s poorest children against diseases including tetanus, diphtheria, whooping cough and polio.

Save the Children hopes to increase immunisation against pneumonia and the diarrhoea bug rotavirus in Kenya and other countries as vaccines become cheaper and more widely available.

Mr Wander, the charity’s media manager for humanitarian emergencies, told Channel 4 News: “The north east one of the most impoverished parts of the country. It’s mainly populated by nomadic pastoralists – people who move around in this quite arid region looking to graze cattle and camels.

“There are no paved roads. There is no electricity. There’s no plumbing or sanitised water and it is currently in the grip of a huge drought.

“I met families and I was really staggered by the numbers of children who were dying from illnesses that would just require a trip to the doctor in the UK.

“Pneumonia kills 30,000 a year in Kenya. Many children are dying from diarrhoea, whooping cough and measles – very common diseases that are preventable.

The biggest childhood killers

“Diarrhoea kills more children in poor countries than Aids and malaria combined.

“I went to graveyards where there were as many small graves containing children as there were adult graves.

“Lack of access to a proper healthcare system is a big problem for these people. Vaccination doesn’t solve that but it is a quick way to help these children.

Diarrhoea kills more children in poor countries than Aids and malaria combined. Andrew Wander

“The pneumococcal vaccine is one that would have taken years to find its way into these sorts of communities.

“Through the GAVI funding and the mechanisms that they have set up, just a couple of years after it was developed, it was rolled out here.

“I spoke to a village elder who told me that since the vaccination programme had been up and running, the children had been getting sick much less.

“Vaccines are a really way of spending aid money, because a child is protected for life against these diseases.

“But there are disparities within countries that need to be addressed. There is no point doing these vaccination rollouts if it’s just concentrating on the richest, easiest-to-reach communities. The people who are most likely to benefit are the poorest.

“Bangladesh is one country where they have tried to reach the people who need help the most, and it’s no accident that they are one of the few countries that are on track to meet the Millennium Development Goals on child mortality.

“If you focus on the children who are most likely to be ill and most likely to die of these diseases, you are going to cut child mortality in a greater way.

“We are not saying it’s going to be easy, but it’s a very, very good start.

“It’s really good news for children in the developing world. It’s not going to be a silver bullet. There needs to be equity in distributing these vaccines and there needs to be the right mechanism in place.”