Vaccinations in the world's hardest to reach places Vaccinations-Mali.JPG

Mamadou KassÃ©, 29, a vaccinator at the Sofara community health center, travels by donkey cart with vaccines for miles to reach the remote Kankelena village, where families are waiting with their children. The use of mobile vaccinators to reach vulnerable populations living in hard-to-reach areas or facing security challenges are among the approaches that UNICEF and its partners have put in place to reach every child. Mopti, March 2019. Mamadou Kasse, 29, is community health worker in Mali's increasingly volatile central region of Mopti, where fear, insecurity and a partial ban on traveling by motorcycle between towns have all significantly limited womenâ€™s access to health centers. Mopti is among the regions of Mali with the lowest levels of vaccination of children - only 37% of children here are fully vaccinated. But the spike in insecurity in the past year has hampered vaccination of children even more severely: in 2017, UNICEF and partners recorded 16,500 children who did not receive their dose of the Penta3 vaccine, whereas in 2018, this number more than quadrupled - to over 70,000 children not vaccinated with Penta3. Even before the spread of insecurity, accessing healthcare was already a challenge for many mothers in Mopti: one in four households is more than 15km away from the nearest health center, and there is only one qualified doctor per every 18,000 people in Mopti - far below WHO's recommended standards. Faced with these challenges, UNICEF and partners are bringing healthcare as close to childrenâ€™s homes as possible - leveraging both innovations and traditional means to bringing critical healthcare services to the children most in need. Since 2018, UNICEF has been using donkey and horse carts to bring vaccines directly to isolated children in the famous but increasingly insecure area of Djenne. Vaccinators like Mamadou travel by donkey cart for up to 8 hours to reach the families the most in need. Â© UNICEF/UN0293636/KeÃ¯ta

Photos Unicef