Yesterday, Dr. Mary Alleman from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta and Dr. Tounkara, who works with the World Health Organization (WHO) here in Bamako, spoke to a small number of Peace Corps volunteers assembled at Tubani So, the Peace Corps training center not far from Bamako.
This Friday, health workers all over the country will head out door-to-door to begin yet another polio vaccination campaign. The CDC and WHO are working in cooperation with the Malian Ministry of Health in hopes to eradicate polio in Mali. Since 2008, Dr. Alleman reported, polio has begun to surge in West Africa. Starting in Northern Nigeria, it has now reached all the way up the West coast of Africa north to Mauritania, frustrating health workers internationally who had thought they were close to eradicating polio completely in Africa.
When polio cases began to pop up in Mali in 2008, health organizations took the cases seriously and the door-to-door campaigns began in a hope to contain and stop the spread of the virus.
But what about routine vaccinations? Why have they taken a back seat, while polio vaccinations have stormed ahead, irregardless of the cost and burden it places on local communities. Why were Malian health centers suddenly without access to the vaccinations vital to preventing outbreaks of other diseases, like measles, yellow fever, and tetanus?
Dr. Tounkara stood up to answer my questions. In 2009, he said, Mali's partner organizations and donors stopped buying Mali's vaccines in the expectation that Mali could now handle the financial burden of buying vaccines on its own. However, that same year, the cost of vaccines went up and Mali was unable to pay for enough vaccines to cover the entire country, leading to the lengthy shortages we experienced in my village.
This year, Dr. Tounkara said, Mali has been able to pay in full and the shortages should be over.
They haven't ended in my village, I said. The system is breaking down, and its terrifying to watch.
Dr. Tounkara took down the name of my village and promised me to look into the problem. I hope he finds some answers.
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I'm glad you at least got a partial answer! I hope it's true that Mali really could pay for the vaccines itself this year - I wonder what it's like in other West African countries that are wealthier; do they already pay for their vaccines?
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