A day with a mobile health team in Aleppo

Aleppo, Syria, 30 April 2019- At 8 a.m., dressed in their white coats, the team of four health workers arrived at their destination in Helwaneyeh neighborhood of east Aleppo. The three vaccinators, Hussein, Fatimah and Aisha, got busy setting up the makeshift vaccination point while Faten walked through the alleys calling to parents through a megaphone to bring children under five to be vaccinated.

People started flocking to the vaccination point including Aminah, who is now the sole caregiver for her five grandchildren after their parents’ death during violence in rural Aleppo. “I don’t have the children’s vaccination records and I don’t know what vaccines they missed out on,” she said, carrying one-year-old Abdulsattar while Nazlieh and Aisha clutched her dress. The health team vaccinated the three children and provided them with new vaccination cards to keep track of future vaccination dates.

When violence subsided in 2017, families started returning to their destroyed homes in the eastern neighbourhoods of Aleppo after years of displacement. Violence had taken a toll on the health sector, forcing health workers to flee and destroying health facilities, leaving children with no access to vaccines.

Marking World Immunization Week, UNICEF together with WHO and partners launched an immunization campaign aiming to reach over 2.7 million children across Syria with life-saving vaccines, with a focus on children who had missed out on their vaccinations.

Thanks to the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), the Office of U.S Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, UNICEF provided vaccines, cold chain equipment as well as a wide-reaching communication campaign aimed at raising caregivers’ awareness on the importance and safety of vaccines and reaching children who had missed out. The communication campaign included UNICEF-supported volunteers going door-to-door to talk to families, as well as community leaders and mobilizers to ensure their support and inform them about vaccination dates and locations.