UNICEF Emergency Response

Dear Friend,

COVID-19 is driving a child survival crisis, with the children at greatest risk of hunger and disease seeing their already fragile health and food systems buckle under the strain of the pandemic. As COVID-19 continues to spread, claiming lives and threatening livelihoods around the world, we know fewer children are dying or falling sick from COVID, but the pandemic is without doubt a child rights crisis. Early estimates of the impacts of COVID-19 on child and maternal mortality in 118 low- and middleincome countries show that disruptions to health systems and reduced access to food could result in an extra 1.2 million deaths of children under age five in just six months. This is in addition to the 2.5 million children under-five who died every six months even before the pandemic.

We know the COVID-19 vaccine will be a critical tool for putting an end to this global pandemic. Over 75 years, UNICEF has built an unprecedented global-health support system. Among its many programs, UNICEF helps immunize more than 45% of the world’s children every year—in some of the most remote places on earth. Due to this experience, UNICEF was chosen to lead global COVID-vaccine procurement and delivery because it’s the only organization with the infrastructure and expertise already in place to make it happen quickly and equitably.

In this role, UNICEF will leverage its market shaping and procurement expertise to help deliver COVID-19 vaccines and other supplies under the COVAX vaccine pillar through two avenues:

• As a procurement coordinator to support the procurement of COVID-19 vaccines of more than 90 higher-income economies which have expressed interest.
• UNICEF will also procure and supply doses of COVID-19 vaccines for 92 low- and lower middle-income countries, doubling its procurement to nearly four billion vaccines by 2021.

Additionally, these efforts will be combined with effective diagnostic and treatment tools, as well as existing prevention and mitigation measures to reduce the spread of the disease, ease pressure on health systems and enable societies to ease restrictions on movement and economic activity.

Thanks to your continued support, UNICEF and partners will deliver two billion vaccines, 245 million therapeutics and 500 million tests to low and middle-income countries in a safe and equitable way in 2021.

In Partnership,

Whitney SImon

Links:

• Together we Won't Stop Protecting Children

Dear Friend,

Seven months into the COVID-19 pandemic, the global number of cases per day continues to increase. As the pandemic endures, it perpetuates an unprecedented socioeconomic, humanitarian, and human rights crisis which is taking its toll on the most vulnerable worldwide. The pandemic has threatened hard-won gains to protect and advance children’s rights to adequate health, nutrition and education, and has the potential to cause irreversible damage to the social and emotional development of an entire generation.

The global COVID-19 pandemic is overstretching health systems, exacerbating deep inequities within countries and across regions, and causing children to face widespread disparities. Ninety percent of countries are experiencing a disruption in the ability to provide crucial healthcare services, leaving millions of children at risk of illness and death. Furthermore, due to the suspension of services and movement restrictions, there has been a decline in access to routine immunizations for mothers and children.

Before the pandemic, UNICEF reached approximately 45 percent of the world’s children under the age of five with vaccines each year.As the search for an effective and safe vaccine for all countries ramps up, UNICEF is playing a critical role in preparing for what could be the largest, most rapid vaccination program the world has seen to date:

• SCALE: UNICEF procures more than 2 billion doses of vaccines annually, for routine immunization and outbreak response on behalf of nearly 100 countries, making it the largest single vaccine buyer in the world,
• EXPERTISE: UNICEF is the main procurement partner of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance which over the last 20 years has reached more than more than 760 million children with life-saving vaccines, preventing more than 13 million deaths.
• INFLUENCE: UNICEF has worked with the governments of nearly 100 countries in low- and lower middle-income countries to provide technical support and expertise to support their vaccination programs.
• REACH: UNICEF has been working on health systems strengthening for the past 70 years, and understands the role of a grassroots, bottom up approach to support health outcomes at the community level.

 Your support of UNICEF’s emergency programs has helped ensure the systems are in place, should a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine become available. You have also helped protect children from other harmful diseases as the world grapples with the effects of the pandemic.

Due to your support, UNICEF will be able to support vulnerable populations in mitigating the negative consequences of COVID-19. As the pandemic continues, UNICEF is working with partners to reimagine and develop a world that is a safer and more equitable place for communities and children everywhere. Today, new technologies and avenues exist as global stakeholders aim to provide a vaccine for the disease. It is UNICEF’s goal to ensure that in a post-pandemic world, all children will be better off than before. In the words of UNICEF Executive Director, Henrietta Fore, “What the world looks like for children and young people tomorrow is our collective responsibility today.”

In Partnership,

Whitney Simon

Dear Friend,

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has spread to over 215 countries with over 461,700 reported deaths and 8.7 million confirmed cases. While children seem to be less vulnerable to COVID-19 itself, the collateral impact on children and their families is significant, with the impact disproportionally affecting poor and vulnerable children and families. Some 1.29 billion children in 186 countries – 73.8 percent of all enrolled students – are directly affected by national school closures. These closures have put the nutritional health of 370 million children at risk by depriving them of school meals. Sufficient water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services are essential for adequate infection prevention and control (IPC); however, across the world, 2.1 billion people lack access to safe water at home and 4.5 billion people lack access to safely managed sanitation.

With your generous support, UNICEF and partners achieved the following results:

• Reached over 1.6 billion people with COVID-19 messaging;
• Provided over 11.5 million people with critical WASH supplies;
• Shipped more than 6.6 million gloves, 1.3 million surgical masks and 428,069 N95 respirators,
• Reached over 79.8 million children with distance/home-based learning;
• Together with Microsoft, announced an expansion of the Learning Passport partnership to enable high-quality digital learning during the crisis; and
• Reached over 830,000 children, parents and/or caregivers with mental health support

Your continued contribution to these efforts allows UNICEF to prevent new infections through public health education and outreach; the scale up of alternative communications channels to help provide education and child protection services; key relevant support to health systems to help boost supplies of key equipment; and tackle misinformation that could have harmful effects on children.

Thank you for your continued partnership in support of UNICEF’s emergency response efforts. Your generous support allows UNICEF to remain flexible in times of crisis and provide support to children when it is needed most.

In Partnership,

Whitney

Dear Friend,

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) is officially a public health emergency of international concern. The COVID-19 epidemic that originated in China has now spread to at least 28 countries and territories. Thanks to your support of UNICEF in emergencies, UNICEF is working with partners to help protect children and contribute to containing the virus.

The size and evolution of the outbreak and current knowledge on its ability to be transmitted through communities signals that the virus could still spread further within the region, despite the efforts by national authorities and the international community to contain it. While the virus has been spreading to other regions, the main burden remains in the East Asia and Pacific region. Urgent efforts are needed to contain the outbreak and to prepare health systems and communities to mitigate the impacts. The effect of a large-scale outbreak on children, especially poor and vulnerable children, can be immense— through disruption to education and health services, impacts on caregivers, and separation from family members.

Five-year-old Yuanyuan is from Wuhan in China, the epicenter of the outbreak of the coronavirus disease. Her parents and grandparents tested positive for COVID-19 and were admitted to a hospital. She was the only one in her family not infected with the virus and was left behind at home. Medical personnel in the hospital decided to look after the girl, and a volunteer helped keep her company. With tens of thousands of COVID-19 cases reported in Wuhan, the city has been under lockdown since 23 January as authorities work to contain the spread of the disease. Most of the city’s hotels were shut down, so the hospital vacated a room for Yuanyuan and the volunteer to live in. The hospital staff provided regular meals and some of the medical personnel taught Yuanyuan how to protect herself from the virus. Yuanyuan has been separated from her family for days but keeps a positive attitude. She follows the advice of the medical personnel looking after her to eat healthily, rest well and go outside for some sun. And with the help of the volunteer, Yuanyuan telephones her mother and cheers her up.

Given the global nature of the outbreak, UNICEF is engaging in preparedness activities and contingency planning for COVID-19 across regions in an effort to keep children such as Yuanyuan safe. UNICEF has also provided critical supplies - protective suits, masks, goggles, gloves - to protect health workers and minimize amplification of infection through health care-associated transmission. Thanks, in part, to your continued support, the first UNICEF personal protective equipment supplies were unloaded upon arrival from Denmark at Pudong International Airport in Shanghai in China on January 29, 2020. The first supplies were delivered weighing nearly six tons and including 97,221 masks and 10,861 protective suits for health workers in Wuhan. To date, a total of 187,221 masks, 28,861 protective suits, 12,000 protective goggles, and 1.2 million disposable gloves were delivered for use by health facilities and other local government departments directly supporting them, and there are thousands more goggles, protective suits and surgical gowns and gloves in the pipeline.

In addition to the provision of needed supplies, UNICEF is focusing on limiting human-to-human transmission and mitigating the impact of the outbreak on the health system and affected communities. This efforts include response or preparedness activities in countries around the world that:

• facilitate risk communication and community engagement activities, including through community-based communication, mass media and social media;
• ensure that children and pregnant and lactating women who are impacted by the outbreak are supported with adequate health care;
• assess and curtail the secondary effects of the outbreak, including by facilitating continued access to education where schools may be closed or quarantines imposed and address protection needs, including through the provision of psychosocial support to those directly or indirectly affected.

Thank you for your continued support. This rapid response would not have been possible without your commitment to UNICEF’s work in emergencies and the wellbeing of children everywhere.

In Partnership,

Whitney

Links:

• Want To Stop An Epidemic? Start With The Facts.

Dear Friend,

With over 2.9 million people in need, including 1.5 million children, the Central African Republic (CAR) is facing one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, given the proportion of the population in need of assistance.

Thanks to your support, UNICEF continues to focus on the protection needs of children, including their release from armed groups, reunification with their families and the provision of psychosocial support, while scaling up programming addressing sexual exploitation and abuse. UNICEF will maintain gender-sensitive water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) facilities and services on settlements for displaced people across the country and improve immunization rates in crisis-affected areas. Activities also support the resilience of children and their communities, including through cash-based approaches in emergency situations, and strong accountability to affected populations.

Thanks to contributions like yours, UNICEF and partners reached the following various programmatic goals, as of August 2019:

• More than 18,000 children with severe, acutre malnutrition admitted for therapeutic care;
• More than 30,000 children vaccinated against measles;
• Nearly 210,000 crisis-affected people accessing safe water;
• Nearly 53,000 children reached with psychosocial support, including access to child-friendly spaces;
• Nearly 1,000 children released from armed groups benefiting from socioeconomic reintegration and support;
• More than 76,000 boys and girls in crisis-affected areas accessing education

UNICEF will continue working to ensure children in the Central African Republic survive and thrive. From access to health and nutrition services to education opportunities, access to safe water and essential psychosocial support, your contribution is vital.

In Partnership,
Whitney Simon