.jpg "Real estate market in the south of Hai Duong city is bustling")
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-ac017d3d3ce25d3405471795d6bb26f0.jpg "Gia Loc needs over 10 billion VND to invest in renovating and expanding landfills.")
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The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said the recent capsize of a boat carrying vaccines and health workers in Tuvalu has highlighted the challenges of providing health care in remote Pacific island nations as they grapple with extreme weather and climate change.
UNICEF Pacific health expert Frances Katonivualiku said that on April 15, a boat carrying health workers from the agency to deliver vaccines to Tuvalu - one of the remote islands - capsized, causing all the vaccines to sink into the sea. UNICEF health workers were rescued and brought to shore. Katonivualiku stressed that extreme weather in low-lying island nations like Tuvalu, which are affected by climate change and rising sea levels, is also challenging health care efforts.
UNICEF is supporting vaccines in the Pacific Islands, considering it a top priority for this remote region.
Dr Katonivaliku is visiting Tuvalu to launch the vaccination programme. She said the intense heat has also made it difficult for mothers to get their children vaccinated during the day, so they have had to take their children to get vaccinated in the evening. To cope with the extreme weather, UNICEF has provided refrigerators to store the vaccines.
UNICEF said it reached a major milestone this week when nine Pacific Island countries – Vanuatu, Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, the Cook Islands, Nauru, Niue, Tokelau and Kiribati – committed to introducing pneumococcal, rotavirus and human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines into their national immunization programmes. UNICEF has seen a significant reduction in pneumonia and diarrhoea since the introduction of these vaccines in these countries, Katonivaliku said. Pneumonia and diarrhoea are the leading causes of death in children under five.
