UNICEF said it will be able to procure and distribute urgently needed polio vaccines, and prevent the further spread of the virus across the Horn of Africa nation and into neighbouring countries with the $1.3 million provided by the Japanese Government.

“Lack of access to routine immunization in Somalia has created the largest known reservoir of unvaccinated children in a single geographic area in the world. The total number of Somali children who had never been vaccinated between 2008 and 2012 was estimated to reach a million,” says Sikander Khan, UNICEF Somalia Representative.

“The poliovirus in such a large reservoir has the potential to result in a catastrophic outbreak, the likes of which are beginning to be seen and as such constitutes an international emergency,” he added in a news release.

In May, a two-year-old girl from the capital, Mogadishu, became the first confirmed case of polio in Somalia in more than six years. The country had been polio-free since March 2007.

As of July, the virus has paralyzed 95 Somali children: 94 confirmed cases in South Central Zone, which includes Mogadishu, and a case in Somaliland. Another nine cases have also been reported in the Dadaab camp in Kenya – the largest refugee complex in the world.

With the help of UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO), Somali communities have launched emergency vaccination campaigns to boost their low polio vaccination coverage. The country currently has the second lowest coverage in the world at 47 per cent, after Equatorial Guinea.

So far, polio vaccines were prepared for six immunization campaigns between May and August, and five rounds have already been carried out. However, vaccines for additional campaigns between September and December have not yet been secured.

More than 2.8 million children under the age of 10 are expected to benefit from Japan’s contribution, which will cover more than 5 million doses of oral polio vaccines for two rounds of immunization activities in the coming months.

UNICEF has been working to support partners and local communities to minimize the scale of this outbreak. However, it warned that frequent movement of people within and between Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and South Sudan could transport the virus further from Somalia to the entire Horn of Africa.

Before the new outbreak, the worldwide number of polio cases had decreased by more than 99 per cent from 350,000 in 1988 to 223 cases in 2012 with active cases reported in only three endemic countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria.

“The outbreak in Somalia, if not controlled quickly, could jeopardize global efforts to wipe out polio once and for all,” UNICEF warned.

With the approaching 2015 deadline to reach the eight anti-poverty targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake said much progress has been made – including declining poverty rates, the near eradication of polio, increased immunizations, more girls attending school, improved access to clean water and nutrition, and more children surviving and thriving beyond their fifth birthdays than ever before.

“But these results are no excuse for rest,” Mr. Lake stressed in the report’s forward. “Our goal is to reach every child, everywhere, no matter how distant or remote, no matter what barriers stand in the way,” he added.

Among its successes, the agency highlights in its Our Story 2012 report the use of mobile phone texting to register births in Nigeria and Uganda, the lack of which in the past has prevented children in those countries from attending school and made them more vulnerable to trafficking and other dangers.

Similarly, this year’s report also highlights the use of a RapidSMS programme to quickly diagnose and treat HIV-infected infants in Zambia, cutting turnaround time for test result from 44 days to 26.

In addition, innovative partnerships, such as between UNICEF and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), led to the creation of the Commission on Life-Saving Commodities for Women and Children to improve access to life-saving health interventions for children under five years of age and women of childbearing age. These activities are in support of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Every Woman Every Child initiative.

In the report, the agency said it and its partners responded to 286 humanitarian situations in 79 countries last year. Among those, the Syrian conflict where UNICEF said it delivered safe water benefitting more than 100,000 people in refugee camps and among host communities, and winter supplies to more than 260,000 people in the country.

The UN agency also said it helped to provide access to uninterrupted education for nearly 80,000 children, provided psychosocial care for an estimated 47,000 children and supported measles vaccination for more than 1.4 million children.

“The organization remains both a world leader in the procurement of supplies for children and the world’s largest provider of vaccines to developing countries,” according to the report, which added that UNICEF’s procurement strategies and financing mechanisms last year generated savings of more than $197 million.

The report also notes that cash contributions to the UN agency rose eight per cent over the previous year, “underscoring donor trust in UNICEF’s ability to leverage its expertise, technical know-how, broad partnerships and global reach.”

UNICEF said it joined the International Aid Transparency Initiative last year, and expanded its public disclosure by releasing online internal audit reports, evaluations and country office annual reports.

“The combined immunization campaign constitutes an important step forward for Chad in its agenda to accelerate child survival and development,” said Bruno Maes, the Representative in Chad for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), which is supporting the effort along with the World Health Organization (WHO).

“Vitamin A supplementation offers the child a better chance of survival and lower risks of being infected by serious infectious diseases. Meanwhile, children who are de-wormed have a better nutritional status, grow faster and develop better learning skills,” Maes added.

More than 9,600 additional community workers have been mobilized across the country to ensure that all targeted children are reached, including nomadic children, who are often difficult to reach, according to a UNICEF press release.

The agency noted that Chad has made tremendous progress towards the eradication of polio, with only 5 cases diagnosed in 2012 compared to132 cases in 2011.

“The campaign will help consolidate gains made in polio eradication in Chad, where no cases have been reported since June 2012,” Maes said.

He cautioned, however, that fundamental concerns remain in the country. There are still a significant number of unvaccinated or missed children during campaigns. “This is a concern in 8 of the 19 regions where the proportion of unvaccinated children has increased during supplementary immunization activities,” he said.

The Government is committed to overcoming those challenges, UNICEF says, noting that Chad has joined the UNICEF global initiative known as ‘Commitment to child survival: a promise renewed’, which aims to reduce the infant mortality rate in countries to below 20 per 1,000 births by 2035.

The immunization campaign, spearheaded by the GAVI Alliance, will cover Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and Sudan.

“Meningitis takes a terrible toll on the people living in vulnerable parts of Africa every year. It is a painful disease which can kill quickly and often leaves victims with disabilities that will blight their lives,” said Seth Berkley, CEO of the GAVI Alliance, the members of which include the UN World Health Organization (WHO), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Meningitis Vaccine Project, amongst a range of other bodies.

The seven countries targeted are vulnerable to seasonal severe outbreaks of meningitis with up to 430 million people at risk from the illness, according to a news release issued by the GAVI Alliance.

“Nobody really understands exactly why just in that region. But every five to seven years there would be an epidemic. There would be hundreds of thousands if not millions of cases. And it would completely drive the economies to a halt,” said Dr. Berkley.

The vaccination drive will ensure those at high risk, particularly children and young adults, are vaccinated by the end of December.

The disease can kill the most severely affected patients within 48 hours and causes brain damage, hearing loss or learning difficulties in 20 per cent of sufferers. The most recent major outbreak, in 1996, saw 250,000 people contract meningitis, of which 25,000 died.

For its 2011-2016 programme, the GAVI Alliance plans to support immunisation efforts in all 26 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Geneva-based GAVI Alliance is a public-private partnership aimed at improving health in the world’s poorest countries. Since its establishment in 2000, GAVI has financed the immunization of more than 325 million children and prevented more than five million premature deaths.