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“It is essential that every child in Venezuela is immunized against polio, because there is no cure for this devastating disease,” said UNICEF Venezuela Interim Representative, Hervé de Lys.
Venezuela has one of the lowest vaccination rates in South America, due to years of economic instability, electrical outages, and lack of frontline health workers in deteriorating health clinics. Thanks to the support of programs like Get a Shot. Give a Shot., however, children like 1-year-old Elizabet Miranda Obregón was able to receive her polio vaccine at a health center in the capital city of Caracas.
Elizabet was just one of more than three million children in Venezuela that were reached as part of this joint UNICEF and WHO mass polio vaccination campaign, protecting them from the paralyzing disease for life.
North America and South America have been polio-free since 1994 due to the widespread availability of polio vaccines, meaning more children are walking today. But if vaccination campaigns are discontinued, wild polio could once again emerge as a threat in the region.
Walgreens in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
Mama Bwanga was heartbroken when two of her children died within days of each other during the Democratic Republic of the Congo's worst measles epidemic in 2019. In fact, the African country's measles outbreak was the worst in the world that year, even outpacing the death toll of the simultaneous Ebola epidemic.
To make matters worse, Mama Bwanga and her children lived in the Nsele district, which was a hotspot of the measles outbreak. The district includes impoverished rural communities near the main international airport, which had more than 8,221 measles cases and 137 deaths that year.
“It was my four-year-old daughter, Mireille, who fell sick first. I had never heard of measles before,” the 25-year-old mother said of the highly-contagious disease.
In 2020, Mama Bwanga made it a priority to travel to the local health clinic to vaccinate her three remaining children – Dieu Merci, Mélé, and Raissa – against measles so that “the disease doesn't claim [her] children again.”
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From September 1, 2023 through December 31, 2023, every immunization administered, Walgreens will donate $0.40 to the United Nations Foundation, up to a maximum donation of $2,600,000.
Vaccines subject to availability. State-, age-and health-related restrictions may apply.
2 Source: Business Wire