Angola: World Cup helps boost upcoming child immunization drive

Riding on the back of World Cup fever, Angola is harnessing the appeal of their star players to promote the country’s upcoming mass immunization drive that will protect more than 3.6 million children from killer diseases.

LUANDA, Angola, 18 June 2006 — With excitement about the World Cup at a peak, Angolan star players are among the most recognizable role models here, inspiring a sense of achievement much appreciated in this war ravaged country.

Vitorina Soi Mariano, second from left, and fellow social mobilizers figure out logistics for the immunization campaign in Moxico Province UNICEF Angola/2006/Stark-Merklein Lucrécia Sakwila and her malaria-stricken son Ismael in Luena hospital, Moxico Province UNICEF Angola/2006/Stark-Merklein Angolan striker Pedro Mantorras, left, and national team captain Akwa made time in their busy schedules to promote Angola's upcoming immunization drive in TV spots being boadcast nationwide UNICEF Angola video, 2006

But a successful World Cup debut is only one of the goals they are striving to reach.

A meticulously planned government campaign aiming to free Angola from child killer diseases will be launched in early July and, starting this week, TV and radio spots featuring star players Akwa, Mantorras, Lebo Lebo and Jamba are calling on citizens to join in.

Red card for measles

Using the soccer field as a metaphor, the TV spots show star strikers kicking out polio while football nets keep out mosquitoes and measles get a red card for foul play.

"The spots are co-sponsored by the Angolan Football Federation in a perfect example how sports, in particular football, can be used as a platform for social mobilization," says Jose Paulo de Araujo, Chief of Programme Communications at UNICEF Angola. "These players are role models for men and women of all ages and have the power to convince parents to get their children immunized," he adds.

Called Viva a Vida com Saúde (translating roughly as "Enjoy a healthy life"), the nationwide campaign will be held between 5 and 26 July and will immunize more than 3.6 million children under five against measles and polio.

The children will also receive Vitamin A supplements and de-worming medicine to improve their nutritional status and boost resistance against diseases, and 800,000 mosquito nets will be distributed as protection against malaria, the number one child killer in Angola.

Approximately 40 Angolan children under five die every day due to malaria that could be prevented by using insecticide-treated mosquito nets from dusk to dawn, when the parasite causing malaria can be transmitted.

Measles have been kept at bay as a result of massive immunization drives in the last few years, but a follow-up campaign is needed to protect vulnerable children from the looming threat of the disease.

Though Angola reported its most recent case of polio in November 2005, the urgency of the campaign is underscored by a sudden reappearance of polio in neighbouring Namibia and Democratic Republic of the Congo in early June. According to the World Health Organization, the virus may have come from Angola.

The immunization drive is part of a strategic government plan to reach the two Millennium Development Goals aiming to reduce maternal mortality and under-five mortality rates (Angola’s rates are among the highest in the world: lifetime risk of maternal death is 1 in 7, compared to 1 in 29,800 in Sweden, and the under-five mortality rate is 260 per 1,000).

Building a strong alliance is paramount to meeting these goals, and Viva a Vida com Saúde counts on support from WHO, UNICEF, the US Government’s President's Malaria Initiative and a range of other partners and donors, including the Measles Initiative Partnership.

Micro-planning far from the World Cup buzz

On the ground, far from the buzz around the World Cup, teams of social mobilizers, health workers and other stakeholders gathered recently in synchronised micro-planning exercises in each of the 164 municipalities in Angola’s 18 provinces to figure out campaign logistics.

In Luena, one of the provincial capitals, men and women cramped into a stuffy meeting room at a government building were punching numbers into calculators until late hours. They were determining child populations to be reached, numbers of mobilizers and vaccinators needed, distances to be travelled and local capacity to manage the cold chain. Quantities of vaccines, syringes, cotton balls, registration cards, fuel, means of transportation, to name a few, had to be analysed and mapped out in painstaking calculations.

"I have participated in every immunization campaign the country has had in the last years, but none was this complex," said Vitorina Soi Mariano from the Provincial Health Directorate, referring to the number of interventions in the upcoming campaign. "The mosquito nets, for example, can’t just be distributed," she explained, "people also have to be told how to use them correctly."

Deadly malaria

A visit to Luena Hospital illustrates the urgency of malaria prevention. "During the raining season from September to March, we admit around 30 malaria cases every day," says Martins Matchica, head of the Emergency Unit, "around 80 per cent of them are children under five."

According to Mr. Matchica, most people don’t have mosquito nets, and often, those who do, don’t know how to use them properly. "People have to be educated about these things," he says, "communities have to be involved in their own health."

Four-month old Ismael Gabriel was lucky. His 19-year old mother Lucrécia Sakwila brought him to the Emergency Unit as soon as he developed a fever, diarrhoea and vomiting, typical symptoms of malaria. He has been in Luena hospital for a week and is finally getting better. According to his mother, the baby never slept under a mosquito net.

"People like Ms. Sakwila are the audience we want to reach," says Mr. Araujo from UNICEF, "and we couldn’t have better advocates than the football stars, now that Angola is doing well at the World Cup and everybody is glued to TV and radio."

Background:
The Measles Initiative, launched in 2001, is a long-term commitment and partnership among leaders in public health and supports the goal of reducing measles deaths globally by 90% by 2010 compared to 2000 estimates. Measles Initiative partners include the American Red Cross, UN Foundation, CDC, World Health Organization, and UNICEF.

Largely due to the technical and financial support of the Measles Initiative and the commitment from African governments, 213 million children have been vaccinated against measles and 1.2 million lives have been saved since 1999. Building on this achievement, in 2005, the Initiative has expanded its technical and financial support to countries in Asia, where total measles deaths are highest outside of sub-Saharan Africa. ** The Initiative will also continue the successful ‘integrated child health campaigns’ in which health workers provide not only measles vaccines, but also insecticide-treated nets for malaria prevention, vitamin A, de-worming medication and polio vaccines.

Since 2001, the Measles Initiative has mobilized more than $200 million and supported more than 40 African countries and three Asian countries in implementing high-quality measles vaccination campaigns. As a result, global measles deaths have dropped by 48% from 871,000 in 1999 to an estimated 454,000 in 2004 thanks to improvements in routing and supplementary immunization activities. The largest reduction occurred in Africa, the region with the highest burden of the disease, where estimated measles cases and deaths dropped by 60%. ****

The measles coalition also includes the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI Alliance), The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Vodafone Group Foundation, Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Japanese International Agency for Cooperation (JICA), Department for International Development of the United Kingdom (DFID), International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (Federation), the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints, Izumi Foundation, Becton, Dickinson and Company and countries and governments affected by measles.

Measles is one of the leading vaccine-preventable childhood killers in the world. In 2004, it was estimated that there were 454,000 measles deaths globally: this translates to more than 1,200 deaths every day; 50 people die every hour from measles. The overwhelming majority of these deaths, that is 410,000 out of 454,0000, are children under the age of five, often from secondary complications related to pneumonia and diarrhea.

A safe and highly effective vaccine has been available for more than 40 years, and it costs less than US $1 to protect a child against measles, making measles vaccinations one of the most cost-effective public health interventions available for preventing deaths. Despite this, millions of children still remain at risk.

For more information about the Measles Initiative, log on to www.measlesinitiative.org. To make a financial contribution, call 1-800 RED CROSS or to make a secure online donation, log on to www.measlesinitiative.org.

CONTACTS:
Michael Oko, American Red Cross, Washington, DC +1 202 303 6820
Amy DiElsi, UNF, Washington, DC +1 202 887 9040
Erica Kochi, UNICEF New York +1 212 326 7785
Steven Stewart, CDC, Atlanta +1 404-639-8327
Hayatee Hasan, WHO Geneva +41 22 791 2103

*Press release on MI success in Africa (http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr55/en/index.html)

**WHO Weekly Epidemiological Record 10 March 2006 on Progress in Reducing Global Measles Deaths; 1999-2004 (http://www.who.int/wer/2006/wer8110.pdf)

***Global Plan for Reducing Measles Mortality 2006-2010 (http://www.who.int/vaccines-documents/DocsPDF06/WHO_IVB_05_11.pdf)

****WHO/UNICEF press release (http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2006/pr11/en/index.html)