Yellow fever vaccination campaign completed in Sudan

The yellow fever vaccination campaign, launched by the Ministry of Health in many states throughout Sudan, in December, has reached almost four million people between nine months and 60 years-old.

According to the Ministry of Health, an estimated 1.9 million people were vaccinated in 15 localities in North Darfur. The population of Kabkabiya, El Sareif Beni Hussein, and Saraf Umra localities had been covered in a similar campaign in 2012, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported in its last weekly bulletin of 2014.

In Central Darfur, Unicef and partners successfully conducted the vaccination programme in the region of Jebel Marra, targeting just over 88,000 people. The vaccination programme actually reached more than 93,000 people. The region was left out of the 2012 yellow fever vaccination campaign because of logistical and security concerns.

The coverage rate was 85 percent for East Darfur, where 382,000 of the targeted 450,000 people were reached in the localities of Adila, Abu Karinka, Asalaya, Abu Jabra, and Bahr El Arab. In South Darfur, some 588,000 people were vaccinated, resulting in a 93 per cent coverage rate.

OCHA reported that the yellow fever vaccination campaign in South and West Kordofan, which initially targeted just over 885,000 people, actually managed to vaccinate 962,000 people.