05 March 2007

Peaceful Days, Better Lives

Immunization saves the lives of children, a fact so widely recognized that it has influenced events over the past 20 years in ways that diplomats, dialogues, and weapons have not. Appeals to protect the children have convinced warring factions to lay down their arms and rebel forces to open their strongholds to those who deliver vaccines to children in remote areas.

These negotiated lulls in fighting are known as “Days of Tranquility,” and since 1985 warriors in bitter conflicts have agreed to temporary truces to make way for massive vaccination campaigns.

It began in 1985 amidst a wrenching civil war in El Salvador. Government security forces and rebels put away their arms for three days to allow 250,000 children to be vaccinated against polio, measles, diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough.

Lebanon in 1987, Sudan in 1989, Sierra Leone in 1998, Burundi in 2002—in these and dozens of other places in the more than two decades since the El Salvadoran war, temporary pauses in fighting have been negotiated for the sake of protecting children from disease

At a U.N. conference in 2004, Sierra Leonean delegate Elisabeth Levalie described how health advocates managed to get to children for vaccinations in hard-to-reach conflict areas. “We had to immunize in the rebel-held areas. So we had to devise strategies: how to get to those people, how to build the confidence that is needed.” A variety of tactics and contacts were used to create peaceful corridors, she said. “We used relatives of the rebels who were in government areas to take the message to them, we used women’s groups, we did advocacy.”

More than 20 years after they first began, Days of Tranquility serve as an oasis of peace where immunization can be safely delivered by thousands of vaccinators—44,000, in fact, in a November 2006 immunization campaign conducted in Sudan.

UNICEF representative Ted Chaiban worked to orchestrate that campaign, calling upon violence-prone communities to ensure the safety of health workers. “Safeguarding a child’s health rises above any political differences that may exist in communities,” he said as the campaign to reach almost 8 million children began. “It is imperative that where fighting continues, vaccinators and monitors are guaranteed safe access, and parents are able to present their children for vaccination.”

This article is from the March 2007 edition of eJournal USA, “Lifesaving Vaccines.”