United Nations Radio

nurse administering shot

UNICEF programmes in central Somalia have been disrupted following the looting of its compound in the town of Jowhar. Militia groups who are fighting government forces took over the compound about a month ago, thus affecting delivery of medicine and other supplies to over a million young children. For more on this, UN Radio's Derrick Mbatha spoke on the line to Nairobi, Kenya, to Acting UNICEF representative to Somalia, Hannan Sulieman.

SULIEMAN: That compound also had all our warehouses which included nutritional feeding products, water and sanitation supplies such as hand pumps, water bladders. It also included medicines and drugs; education supplies for schools, tents/texts for schools. And it also had what we call a cold chain facility where we keep all vaccines for children and for women. And that cold chain services nearly all Central and Southern Somalia. So basically it means that if we don't get this cold chain operating again, our vaccination programme is at a serious risk of being halted completely. Right now the cold chain is (destroyed). It is not functioning, and the different maternal and child health centres and health posts around the country are basically surviving on existing supplies they had already.

MBATHA: Now, you say that the cold chain is not functioning. Is this affecting whatever material you have there?

SULIEMAN: Absolutely. Basically it means that all the vaccines we have stored there are now (destroyed). We cannot use them. It means that vaccinations against measles, against polio, tetanus for women will stop if we're not able to start the cold chain again.

MBATHA: What is being done by local authorities to try to deal with this situation-if they are capable of doing anything?

SULIEMAN: We are actually talking to groups on the ground. We are talking to some of our local NGO partners, the elders of Jowhar, and some of the private companies there. And they are trying to negotiate with the local authorities which are from the insurgent group to hand back the compound to UNICEF and to return the looted items. And so far we have not seen any outcome of these negotiations. There has been no collaboration from the insurgent group in control.

MBATHA: How many people are being affected by this situation, in particular children and women?

SULIEMAN: We are talking about over a million children under five years of age who will be affected. We're talking about 40,000 children under three-years-old who are malnourished that will not be provided with feeding products. We are talking about over 700,000 women that will not be provided with tetanus shots, vaccinations and other services.

MBATHA: Apart from UNICEF urging that humanitarian work not be impeded, what else can the agency do?

SULIEMAN:  We are procuring vaccines and other nutritional feeding products and positioning them in other locations and moving them to our local partners. But that will take time of course because by the time we put supply orders in and move them into Somalia, that means there is a gap of a few months. So it's that gap we're worried about. But we're present in different parts of central-southern Somalia, and we're continuing the work. In fact, recently, right before the looting of this compound, we had just finished a massive immunization and health services campaign where we reached over a million children and hundreds of thousands of women with immunization against eight diseases, health education, water purification tablets. It's been the first time ever that this many children have been reached with immunization in Somalia. And now the looting of this compound means that for the second round of this campaign we will be delayed if we're unable to get our equipment and supplies into the country and into the different locations.

PRESENTER:  Hannan Sulieman, Acting UNICEF representative to Somalia

duration: 4'03"