The vaccines that bring hope to the children of Africa

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/the-vaccines-that-bring-hope-to-the-children-of-africa-7582493.html



At first light mothers gather outside dozens of small health clinics in one of Nairobi's teeming slums. They emerge from thousands of homes made of rusted metal sheets and sodden cardboard, and wait next to rivers of sewage and waste where goats forage for breakfast.

Each mother carries a small infant on her hip, or in a makeshift sling across her back. They are queuing up for the life-saving vaccines for their children that many of us take for granted.

Across Africa, preventable diseases are still claiming the lives of children in their hundreds of thousands each year. "These clinics are busy every day, every session – mothers with children are lining up all morning and in the afternoon," said Josephine Odanga, an emergency health officer with Unicef in Kenya.

"The highest infant mortality rates are in high-density areas, and in remote areas where care-givers have to travel long distances to reach some communities. We need to do more to get health services to them."