Trekking savannah to deliver Maasai nomads' vaccines
December 5, 2012 -- Updated 1814 GMT (0214 HKT)
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Getting vaccines to wandering Maasai tribes in Tanzania can take days
- About 8% of Tanzanians do not receive basic life-saving vaccines
- GAVI Alliance Partners' Forum to focus on children's access to life-saving vaccines.
- Tanzania to launch new vaccines to prevent pneumonia and diarrhea
Editor's note: Chris Endean works for GAVI Alliance,
a public-private partnership focused on increasing access to
immunization in poor countries. He writes for CNN ahead of the GAVI
Alliance Partners' Forum in Tanzania.
Arusha, Tanzania (CNN) -- In most doctors' waiting
rooms, it's the nurse who calls the mother and child for their
vaccination. In Tanzania's Arusha National Park, nurse Neema Baynet has
to go out and find her patients.
With the Maasai tribes
constantly on the move searching for water and fresh pasture for their
cattle, Baynet can spend up to five days traveling 100 km searching the
savannah for remote communities for whom her mobile immunization clinics
are the only protection against deadly disease.
"A week before we set
off, we send out a message to the communities and ask them to spread the
word that we are coming so we can vaccinate as many children as
possible," says Baynet. "Tell them the chanjos [vaccines] are coming.
Bring your children!"
Click to enlarge map
Despite the beauty of the
backdrop of mountains, lakes and stunning savannah, Arusha's geography
poses severe logistical challenges that leave Maasai mothers waiting
days rather than hours for the nurse -- not because of a backlog of
patients but because the nurse struggles to reach them.
There are rivers to
cross, rough tracks that turn into mud beds in the rainy season,
impassable even for 4x4 vehicles, and sometimes no real track to follow.
The terrain means health workers often sleep in their vehicle and are
forced to complete their journey by foot -- in a region renowned for its
dangerous wildlife.
"We do not often see lions," says Baynet, "but we can hear them at night and see their tracks by day."
When a child falls sick in such areas, the greatest problem is getting them medical help.
Osmand Swai, clinical officer, Gelai Lumbwa
Osmand Swai, clinical officer, Gelai Lumbwa
In the soaring
temperatures of Arusha's equatorial climate, Baynet's quest to find her
patients is also a race against time: modern vaccines must be kept cool
to preserve their powers of prevention, and a cold box packed with ice
is Baynet's very temporary defense.
Yet the children of the Maasai cannot afford to miss out on the protective powers of vaccines.
"When a child falls sick
in such areas, the greatest problem is getting them medical help," says
Osmand Swai, clinical officer at a health center in the Maasai village
of Gelai Lumbwa. "They have to be carried over vast distances to reach
the nearest doctor. When they arrive, they are usually in a very bad
condition."
Nasieku Engishon lives
in the Maasai settlement of Engirirat, near Gelai Lumbwa. She almost
lost her 10-month-old daughter to pneumonia and diarrhea. "When a child
becomes sick, we carry them to the health center," she says. "Carrying a
sick child, it can take four to six hours to get there."
As a tribe that was
decimated by disease and famine in the 19th century, the Maasai
themselves are keenly aware of the importance of vaccinating their
children.
"There was an outbreak
of measles here last August and a lot of children became very sick,"
says Narangrang Laiseri, from Gelai Lumbwa. "They took them to hospital,
but five from this area died. I was lucky -- my son had been vaccinated
against measles and he was one of the ones who got better quickly."
The need to get to
hard-to-reach people like the Maasai and the rest of the estimated 8% of
Tanzania's population that do not receive basic life-saving vaccines
has taken on a new urgency with the country's recent launch of a
five-year development plan.
The government wants to
shift the national economy up a gear in its drive to transform Tanzania
into a middle-income country by 2025, and it is now widely acknowledged
that investing in children's health through vaccination is critical to
building solid economic foundations. Healthy children do better in
school and have a better chance to reach their full economic potential.
Tanzanian President
Jakaya Kikweke is hosting this week's high-level gathering of over 650
immunization experts in the capital, Dar-es-Salaam. The GAVI Alliance Partners' Forum (5-7 December) will focus on how to achieve equity in children's access to life-saving vaccines.
Sometimes they are so far away, they do not hear about the vaccination in time.
Narangrang Laiseri, Maasai woman
Narangrang Laiseri, Maasai woman
To mark the event, the
health ministry will launch two new vaccines into the national
immunization program -- pneumococcal and rotavirus -- tackling the
primary causes of pneumonia and diarrhea -- two of the leading killers
of under-fives in Tanzania.
Tanzania's One Plan aims to ensure that these new vaccines reach all children, from the Maasai in the north to the islands of Zanzibar, where boats are used to deliver medicine to the more remote of the archipelago's many islands.
"We have a strategy to
reach every child with vaccination and we engage communities in planning
and implementing it," says Yussuf Makame, manager of Zanzibar's
Expanded Programme on Immunisation.
However, Maasai mothers
remain fearful that the sheer geographical scale of Arusha means that
for them the waiting game is destined to go on.
"Of course we know how
important it is to vaccinate our children," says Laiseri. "Whenever we
hear the vaccinators are coming, people bring their children. But
sometimes they are so far away, they do not hear about the vaccination
in time."
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