Nigeria is a linchpin in the global campaign by UNICEF and its partners — the World Health Organization (WHO), Rotary International, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control — to eradicate polio by 2005.

The most populous country in Africa, Nigeria also has one of the world's highest remaining levels of polio virus. The global eradication effort will only succeed once polio is eliminated from such strongholds. Until then, millions of children run the risk of contracting the virus.

In Nigeria and 29 other countries where polio remains a threat to children's health, UNICEF and its partners are stepping up their efforts — in some cases, going house to house — to reach children who have not yet been immunized.

National Immunization Days: Reaching Every Child
In January, UNICEF, WHO and Rotary International sponsored three National Immunization Days (NIDs) as part of the continuing effort to provide polio vaccine to every Nigerian child under age five — an estimated 40 million children in all.

NIDs are immense undertakings in which tens of thousands of health professionals and volunteers blanket a nation to immunize children against polio and other childhood diseases. Last year alone, NIDs resulted in the immunization of 550 million children in 82 countries. In most of those countries, NIDs also provided vitamin A supplements, which help reduce childhood deaths from common infections.




I want to give a voice to the shocking reality of AIDS.


The day after my father died, our family decided to announce the cause of his death to the world. It was a bombshell that shocked many, affecting the lives of many millions in death as he had in life. My uncle, Femi's brother Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, the family and I spoke up because we felt a personal need to break the silence surrounding AIDS. Silence in the face of AIDS encourages ignorance, stokes denial and perpetuates misinformation. Continuing the conspiracy of silence during this monumental catastrophe is no less than criminal.

I want to give a voice to the shocking reality of AIDS.

In my concerts, I speak about AIDS, and I often have banners on stage promoting AIDS awareness. I am trying to build this awareness through my concerts and other forums and I challenge others lucky enough to be in my position to do the same. AIDS is real, it is here, cutting down those we know and love indiscriminately, brothers, sisters, fathers and mothers. Africa and its friends need to confront AIDS with the same determination and unity as they would an enemy out to annihilate them. Although battle-hardened, Africa has never confronted such an enemy: Of the 2.6 million people who died of AIDS last year, 85 per cent were Africans. By the end of this year, 10.4 million African children will have lost one or both parents to AIDS. (UNAIDS source)

Families are devastated, communities are decimated, hospitals are overwhelmed. Schools have lost teachers to the disease and pupils are being forced to drop out for lack of funds. Places of employment have losses in personnel and productivity that are difficult to absorb. Africa's gains - in health, education and industry - are evaporating. Against such odds, one of the most important actions for governments and all those in positions of influence, privilege, knowledge and power is to raise the alarm loudly and clearly. Information is a powerful tool in the struggle to tame the rampant spread of AIDS. In Africa, it is one of the very few tools we have. We have not used it very well. Only about 1 in 10 people in some parts of Nigeria even know what AIDS is, much less how to avoid it. And such levels of misinformation exist all over the continent. Failing to educate people about the disease is like signing their death sentences. Political leaders, artists, performers, and teachers, therefore, need to seize every opportunity to educate all those at risk about how to protect themselves from HIV infection.

There is so much that needs to be said. We must speak about the high risks our mothers and sisters face of contracting this disease, in some places three to four times the risk that men and boys face. Women are vulnerable often becoming infected in a tragic paradox in the course of producing new life. But some of cultural practices greately heighten their peril, making it difficult or even impossible for them to protect themselves. We cannot, with clear consciences, keep quiet about this. We must help women understand their rights and risks, and we need to support them when they exercise their rights, in taking control of their sexuality and their bodies. As individuals, we must speak of the need to change behaviour. It is suicidal to have numerous sexual partners.

The message must be repeated again and again that the surest protection against HIV infection is i) abstinence and ii) practicising safer sex - using a condom or non-penetrative sex

Everyone who is sexually active must take full responsibility for their actions and health and use condoms to protect themselves and others. Equally, we must dispel the negative myths surrounding the notion of living with AIDS. People who are HIV-positive need support and care. Like many HIV-positive people, Fela was ill for several years and he was lucky to have a family that loved and cared for him through the difficult time of his sickness. But many people who are HIV-positive are ostracized and treated as outcasts by their own communities, or worse. Far more often than we would like to admit, children and other sick people are abandoned in hospitals or other institutions.

Such ignorance and intolerance must be stamped out. Those living with AIDS can be helped to live full and secure lives and in turn help others to avoid the disease. In families where AIDS has struck, truth must be spoken about the cause of death. Popular euphemisms like "after a brief illness" or attributing death to supernatural causes or other substitutes make it easy to ignore the real cause and does not save lives. Let all of us losing loved ones to AIDS let it be known that the disease is here and it is indiscriminate in its attack. Only after people know, feel, hear and see the presence of AIDS will they be moved to change their behaviour. But behaviour change is only part of the solution. When people are poor and unemployed, they feel hopeless. Many "area boys and girls"-the street children of Lagos-have told me that they engage in risky sexual behavior simply out of boredom. The message is clear: to fight AIDS, we must fight poverty, with greater energy and more resources than has so far been the case.

Until there is a cure, let's raise our voices against HIV/AIDS in a song heard around the world. It is a song of defiance and struggle. But most of all, it is a song of hope-the hope that when we sing forcefully together, the silence and stigma that nourishes this epidemic can be broken, and life can triumph over death. UNICEF HAS HELP ALOT IN THE COMMUNITY IN NIGERIA IN HELPING VANDALIZE AIDS AND HIV

Life is too short,rich people are in the shelter while some poor people are there but no shelter,no food,no hospitality and no maintanance of the child,there are some rich people out there,they see those we are in need but they do not respond to help.

LIFE IS SHORT,but do remember that there is gonna be a day that there life too will shine

As 13 year old Habakiama Theophile peers out of the window of the Russian built Ilyushin IL-76 transport, he cries for joy. Through a gap in the clouds he catches his first glimpse of Rwandan soil in nearly four years. "C'est Rwanda, Rwanda" he cries as his fellow travelers crowd around the window. For Habakiama and his 248 fellow orphans traveling on one of the first special repatriation flights organized by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the four year nightmare was coming to an end.
A mere 24 hours earlier he had emerged from the jungle south of the eastern Zairian town of Kisangani, starving and exhausted. He, along with 80 000 mostly Rwandan Hutu refugees, had fled four days earlier, deep in to the jungle to escape the wrath of local Zairian villagers and soldiers who had attacked their camps. Habakiama was, one of the lucky ones. He had survived. The attack on the three Rwandan refugee camps on the road south of Kisangani, in late April was the tragic epilogue to the perhaps one of the darkest chapters in Africa's history: Rwanda's genocide.

His ordeal had begun in June 1994 when he fled the Rwandan capital, Kigali, with his parents, who no doubt feared retribution for the genocidal slaughter of those dark months. By the time he got to Goma he, and tens of thousands of children like him, had been orphaned.

In the years that followed he was cared for by the various International NGO's that operated in eastern Zaire.

Then when the civil war broke out in eastern Zaire in December 1996, he was among the final group of over 200 000 Rwandans, who for reasons that defy mere mortals, chose not to go home, but fled west, deep into the jungles of Zaire. Five months and 1000kms later, he was among the final group of 80 000 survivors who arrived on the jungle road south of Kisangani.

By then Kisangani had fallen to Laurent Kabila's rebel alliance and the refugees - considered enemies of the alliance - were herded into three camps, Kasese (Kilometer 25), Biaro, (Kilometer 41) and Kilometer 82, on the jungle trail south to Ubundu. Five months on the march had taken its toll: Thousands had died or just disappeared in the jungle, and thousands more were on the brink of disaster: Disease, starvation and just sheer exhaustion were killing over 120 refugees a day.

The UNHCR and its sister NGOs, The World Food Program (WFP), UNICEF, Medcin Sans Frontiers (MSF), OXFAM and Save the Children - to name the most prominent - reacted immediately to the crisis, launching a major relief operation.

The problems posed by such an operation were manifold: To begin with there were the obvious logistical problems of running a relief operation in the middle of Zaire's tropical rain forest; Food and medical supplies, along with all the necessary infrastructrural equipment, had to be transported along roads that all but disintegrated with the arrival of the seasonal rains in mid-April. Even crossing the Congo river was a recurring ordeal that added two to three hours to the daily journey to the camps.

Alongside these logistical problems, the UN also faced a less than enthusiastic rebel administration and an openly hostile local population. The presence of 80 000 Rwandan refugees placed a huge strain on an already fragile environment. Furthermore, the scale of the UN's operations generated considerable resentment, particularly among Zairian villagers who literally watched tons of food pass under their noses!

Yet within two weeks the UN and the various other NGO's had been able to stabilize the humanitarian situation. Despite the outbreak of cholera - which is endemic to the rain forest in the rainy season - the death rate by the latter part of April had dropped to under 60 people a day.

Alongside this relief operation, the UN had also begun to prepare a plan for the repatriation of the refugees to Rwanda, thereby hopefully bringing to an end, this tragic saga.

On the eve of the scheduled beginning of the airlift, disaster struck: The already hostile attitude of the local Zairian villagers who lived near the three camps was inflamed by an attack by unidentified "Rwandan-speaking" troops on the Zairian village of Kasese. Six villagers were gunned down in their beds in a style of attack that was reminiscent of the bad days in KwaZulu Natal. In what appears as an act of reprisal local villagers, supported by unidentified units of Kabila's rebel army launched a concerted attack on the camps, sending the refugees fleeing deep into the forest.

For nearly a week Kabila's rebel alliance denied the UN access to the camps. But as the bloody details of the massacres began to leak out and the level of international condemnation increased, they were forced to relent.

Yet when the UN was eventually allowed back into the area to search for the survivors they found scenes of horror and mutilation that shocked even the most seasoned of its personnel. Starving and exhausted, the refugees had slowly begun to re-emerge from the jungle, all telling the familiar story, and in many cases bearing the scars, of mayhem and murder.

Fearful of further attacks, the UN moved swiftly to evacuate the refugees and begin the process of repatriation. Within days the airlift was in full swing, with over 1 200 Rwandans being flown home daily. And while the airlift continues at this time, some 30 000 people remain unaccounted for, lost to Zaire's heart of darkness.

The precise details of the horror in the jungles south of Kisangani will never be known. The jungle itself will probably conceal the depths of human depravity witnessed here, unwittingly shielding the perpetrators of this latest genocide from justice. Adil Bradlow whilst on an assignment for Associated Press spent a month in Kisangani, Zaire in 1997.

Children are suffering and dying.This should be stop and stop children killing.

This is a picture of A child dying,War should be stop