This is the VOA SpecialEnglish Development Report.
Five leading public health organizations have announced acampaign to reduce the number of deaths among children in Africacaused by measles. The American Red Cross is leading this effort.Its goal is to save the lives of more than one-million children overthe next five years. Officials hope to give vaccine medicines toprevent measles to more than two-hundred-million children.
Measles attacks the skin surfacesand the body’s defense system against disease. It also can causeblindness and brain damage. Measles is the single leading cause ofdeath among children in Africa. It kills more thanfour-hundred-fifty-thousand children in Africa each year. Yet it canbe easily prevented with a simple vaccine medicine.
Danny Tarantola (tah-RAHN-to-lah) is the Director of Vaccines atthe World Health Organization. He says measles is seen in manyAfrican communities as the one disease that tests the survival ofchildren. Doctor Tarantola says in some communities children willnot be given a name unless they have survived the disease.TheAmerican Red Cross has joined four other organizations in thecampaign against measles. They are the United States Centers forDisease Control, the World Health Organization, the United NationsFoundation, and the U-N Children’s Fund. The five groups havepromised two-hundred-million dollars for the campaign. That is aboutone-dollar for each child.
Officials say the campaign really began last year. More thantwenty-million children received the measles vaccine in Tanzania,Uganda, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Benin and Cameroon.Officials say the campaign reached ninety-five percent of thechildren in those countries and saved more thanone-hundred-forty-thousand lives. Officials now plan to targetfifty-three-million children in twelve more countries this year.
Health officials hope to follow a model used during a successfulcampaign against the disease polio. They say the polio operationhelped build a support system in Africa that the measles campaignwill use. Officials are carrying out the effort against measles inAfrica first because the need is greatest. However, they hope toextend the campaign to other parts of the world.
This VOA Special English Development Report was written by JillMoss.