Latest United Nations Children's Fund News

FILE - In this July 13, 2019, file photo, health workers wearing protective suits tend to an Ebola victim kept in an isolation tent in Beni, Democratic Republic of Congo. The task of vaccinating millions of people in poor and developing countries against COVID-19 faces monumental obstacles, and it's not just a problem of affording and obtaining doses. Rumors flew about the Ebola vaccines, including the idea they were meant to kill people, said Dr. Maurice Kakule, an Ebola survivor who worked in vaccination campaigns. Similar suspicions are spreading about the COVID-19 vaccine, he said. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)

Wars, instability pose vaccine challenges in poor nations

Dec. 27, 2020 8:02 AM EST

DAR MANGI, Pakistan (AP) — Arifullah Khan had just administered another polio vaccine when the gunfire blasted from the nearby hills. “It happened so suddenly. There was so much gunfire it felt like an explosion,” he said, recalling details of the attack five years ago in Pakistan’s...

FILE - In this June 11, 2009, file photo, the logo of the World Health Organization is seen at the WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. The head of the World Health Organization says on Friday, Dec, 18, 2020 the U.N. health agency’s program to help get COVID-19 vaccines to all countries in need, has gained access to nearly 2 billion doses of several “promising” vaccine candidates. None of the agreements currently include the vaccines by Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech, which is already in use in the United States, Canada and Britain. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus, File)

WHO: Vaccine program gets access to nearly 2 billion doses

Dec. 18, 2020 1:23 PM EST

GENEVA (AP) — The World Health Organization program to help get COVID-19 vaccines to all countries in need has access to nearly 2 billion doses of “promising” vaccine candidates, officials said Friday. None of the agreements include the vaccines by Moderna, which took one stop closer to...

FILE - In this Thursday, Dec. 3, 2020 file photo, two year old Akon Morro, who is anemic and suffers from edema due to malnutrition, sits on the floor of a feeding center in Al Sabah Children's Hospital in the capital Juba, South Sudan. Economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic has set back two decades of progress against the most severe forms of malnutrition and is likely to kill 168,000 children before a global recovery. That's according to a global study from a coalition of international organizations. (AP Photo/Sam Mednick, File)

Hunger study predicts 168,000 pandemic-linked child deaths

Dec. 14, 2020 12:08 PM EST

PARIS (AP) — Economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic has set back decades of progress against the most severe forms of malnutrition and is likely to kill 168,000 children before any global recovery takes hold, according to a study released Monday by 30 international organizations. The study from the...

FILE - In this Nov. 23, 2019 file photo, a malnourished newborn baby lies in an incubator at Al-Sabeen hospital in Sanaa, Yemen. The United Nations Children’s Fund on Monday, Dec. 7, 2020, launched a global appeal for a record $2.5 billion of emergency assistance for the Middle East and North Africa, saying the funds were necessary to respond to the needs of millions of children across a region hit hard by conflict, natural disaster and the coronavirus crisis. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed, File)

Yemen 'on edge of precipice' as UNICEF launches aid appeal

Dec. 7, 2020 12:19 PM EST

JERUSALEM (AP) — Yemen is “on the edge of a precipice” after years of civil war, a senior U.N. official has warned on Monday, with millions of children suffering from malnutrition and facing the risk of famine. Ted Chaiban sounded the alarm about the worsening humanitarian situation as the...

FILE - In this file photo dated Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2017, World Health Organization President Tedros Adhanom speaks to the press during the World Health Organization conference on noncommunicable diseases in Montevideo, Uruguay. At a meeting of WHO’s member states, Monday Nov. 9, 2020, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he welcomed “any and all attempts to strengthen the organization...for the sake of the people we serve.

UN health chief: World can start dreaming of pandemic's end

Dec. 4, 2020 11:43 PM EST

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. health chief declared Friday that positive results from coronavirus vaccine trials mean the world “can begin to dream about the end of the pandemic,” but he said rich and powerful nations must not trample the poor and marginalized “in the stampede for...

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