Libya will launch a campaign on Saturday to vaccinate more than 2.7 million children after facing shortage in its vaccine supply, the Health Ministry announced.
Under the supervision of the World Health Organization (WHO), the national immunization campaign is organized with the United Nations children fund UNICEF, Libya’s WHO representative Jaafar Hassan said in a Wednesday press conference.
For nearly a year, the U.N.-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) faced a serious shortage in its vaccine supply, pushing many Libyan parents to travel to other countries or to import drugs themselves.
“Three months ago, Libya filed an application at international organizations to help cope with a serious shortage of vaccines,” said Badereddine al-Najjar, head of the National Center for Disease Control in Libya.
He added that international organizations responded quickly to their demand and Germany funded the vaccines. Meanwhile, the UNICEF has played an important role in importing and distributing the vaccines.
Najjar said the National Center for Disease Control in Libya has advised GNA to “set aside an independent budget for the next three years” to prevent another vaccine crisis.
Libya has suffered a number of crises in recent years, including armed clashes that
have led to thousands of people being killed and injured, large-scale
displacements and damage to vital infrastructure.
By Dec. 24, 2014, it was estimated that 2.5 million people were in need of humanitarian assistance, and the 435,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) are particularly at risk, according to a WHO report in May 2015.
Due to its vulnerability, negligence and civil war since 2011 uprising, health services have suffered from several deficiencies, and they have become dependent on foreign health workers, which have later left Libya due to the lack of security.
With increasing number of foreign health workers leaving Libya, the functionality of health facilities have seriously been affected alongside the inaccessibility of some of them, which have been damaged or looted.
Further, Libya is witnessing a steady decline in its national revenues, caused by reduced
oil exports on which Libya’s economy mainly depends.
Together with the ongoing political and security situation, the financial situation is affecting the health system as shortages of drugs and medical supplies are occurring and the budgetary cuts are decreasing the number of patients sent abroad, which put an additional burden on the already weakened Libyan health-care system, according to the WHO.
