JUBA, Feb. 22 (Xinhua) -- The World Health Organization (WHO) said Thursday it will scale up routine immunization coverage in South Sudan to ensure all children receive life-saving vaccines despite insecurity.
The UN agency said experts from the health ministry, Gavi Alliance, UNICEF and Centre for Communicable Disease Control (CDC) have been strategizing on ways of vaccinating some 485,000 children under one in 2018.
Evans Liyosi, acting WHO Representative to South Sudan, said efforts to increase access to immunization services is vital to save the lives of the vulnerable children in hard-to-reach areas.
"Immunization is one of the most effective interventions to prevent disease and early child death," Liyosi said in a statement issued in Juba.
"With the over 30 million U.S. dollars invested in the past two years, we are able to reach more than 5 million children with multiple vaccines through campaigns and routine immunization," he added.
According to WHO, despite widespread conflict and insecurity, South Sudan has witnessed a remarkable improvement in routine vaccination coverage in 2017.
It said since the introduction of the pentavalent or five-in-one vaccine to guard infants against diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, hepatitis B (HB) and Haemophilus influenza type b -- the country has raised pentavalent vaccine coverage from 45 percent in 2016 to 57 percent in 2017.
Kofi Boateng, WHO Immunization Technical Officer, said though the third dose of pentavalent vaccine coverage has increased marginally from 45 percent in 2016 to 57 percent in 2017, the coverage for areas seriously hit by the crisis has not changed significantly, remaining at 16 percent.
"Population displacements coupled with disrupted health service delivery indicated hundreds of thousands of the population are in dire need of innovative interventions to reduce risk of consequences of vaccine preventable disease," Boateng emphasized.