Aid Workers In Somalia Struggle To Contain Polio Outbreak, U.N. Reports
“Aid workers in war-torn Somalia are struggling to contain a dangerous outbreak of the crippling polio virus, with rampant insecurity hampering efforts, the United Nations said Friday,” Agence France-Presse/Fox News reports. “Six years after the Horn of Africa nation was declared free of the virus, at least 105 cases have been confirmed in Somalia, the ‘worst outbreak in the world in a non-endemic country,’ the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs [OCHA] said in a statement,” the news agency writes, noting, “While some four million people have been vaccinated, getting drugs to more than 600,000 children in southern and central Somalia — areas partly under control of the Al-Qaeda linked Shebab, who block vaccination efforts — is ‘extremely challenging,’ it added” (8/16). In an article on its webpage, UNICEF examines “the urgent effort to deliver vaccinations” in the country (Price, 8/14).
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