Unicef chief warns of threat of measles outbreak among refugee children
Ukrainians are urged to get vaccinated on arrival to prevent diseases spreading
UKRAINIAN refugees arriving into Ireland are being urged to get their children vaccinated immediately amid fears of a large-scale measles outbreak.
In an interview with the Irish Mail on Sunday, head of Unicef Ireland, Peter Power, warned: ‘Children’s vaccination rates against a number of diseases, particularly measles, is low in Ukraine and we would be really concerned about measles outbreaks.’
Mr Power said Covid vaccine rates are also low in Ukraine and that refugees arriving in the EU should be offered jabs as a priority as well.
‘Obviously when people are unvaccinated and on the move, the chances of Covid spreading increase but there are so many different and competing needs here.
‘This is just one of them. And for people who cross EU borders and have Covid, the health system of those European countries will obviously have to stand up and assist them.’
The HSE also warned measles is circulating in Ukraine and that ‘recent outbreaks of polio and measles have been detected’.
Health officials said it is important children coming to Ireland from Ukraine are ‘age-appropriately vaccinated to protect them against vaccine preventable diseases’.
A spokesman said: ‘Children may be living in congregated settings such as hotels or reception centres where the spread of infectious diseases is a risk.
‘As a priority, every effort should be made to ensure children are up to date with MMR and polio-containing vaccines.
‘Children from Ukraine should follow the Irish immunisation schedule. This is because they will be living in Ireland for some time and should be protected from diseases that are common and have serious consequences in Ireland.’
Mr Power said that, aside from Covid and measles, water borne diseases such as cholera, unheard of in Europe for a long time, are now a real concern.
He told the MoS: ‘We’re finding with women coming over the border that one of their first requirements is basic sanitation for themselves and their children.
‘In Dnipro [in eastern Ukraine], running water is only available two hours every two days and when you have that sort of situation, water borne disease becomes a very real prospect. Then there are the real essentials like basic food and medicine and clothes. The fact that some children have been living underground for what is turning into months is a big challenge too
‘Life goes on and children are being born into wars as they have been in the past. They need enormous care and their mothers need enormous care.’
Mr Power, a former Minister of State for overseas development, said that attempted sex trafficking of women and child refugees as reported in last week’s MoS is also ‘a huge problem’ for people fleeing the war in Ukraine.
He said: ‘Whenever women or children are separated from their husbands and fathers, their vulnerability escalates dramatically.
‘This is a feature of conflicts all over the world. It’s a very sad thing to say, but often the first people into crises like this are the child traffickers and the people who want to exploit children.
‘These people see these disasters as opportunities.’ He said Unicef is monitoring crossing points into the EU for potential ‘child exploitation and sexual exploitation of women. We’ve got specialists who’ve developed expertise over many years and they’re very adept at identifying this type of activity’.
He added: ‘Inside Ukraine, we’ve got 15 mobile child protection units whose sole purpose is to identify unaccompanied children and at the border areas we also have 15 centres and that’s where we’re particularly looking out for these traffickers.’
The Unicef Ireland boss predicted the war will be a long and drawn out conflict.
His organisation has now raised over €10m in Ireland through corporate and other donations, but he stressed the needs of children coming out of Ukraine are complex and
‘Children’s vaccine rates are low in Ukraine’
‘Traffickers see disasters as opportunities’
many. Mr Power said: ‘The first thing they need is what we called psychological and social care because some of these children are extremely psychologically traumatised by what they’ve seen and some of the experiences which they’ve been through.
‘Any child who has to leave their home, and their father in many cases, leaving their education, their community and childhood friends is going to suffer. Any child that’s been subjected to that experience let alone seeing acts of violence will require psychological help.
‘And some of the children at the border are highly traumatised. For Unicef this is a top priority, in fact it is our top priority.’
When asked about the plan to accommodate refugees in communal settings in such as Army barracks, gyms or tents, Mr Power stressed that this is not a mediumor long-term solution.
‘I wouldn’t like to comment on how people are accommodated in an emergency context but I would say that in the longer term the rights of children, their rights to protection, their right to continuing their education and their right to be reunited with their families is paramount. And their accommodation has to reflect that.’
Criticisms have been made about the remote rural locations where some Ukrainians have been housed.
However, the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth which oversees the settling of refugees here, was unable to provide a regional breakdown for where refugees are being located this weekend.
A spokesman told the MoS: ‘The department is contracting temporary hotel accommodation across the country in order to accommodate arrivals from Ukraine as the need arises. At present, it is not possible to provide details regarding how many persons fleeing the conflict in Ukraine have arrived in each location to date as it is likely to change quickly depending on the number of people arriving into the country on a daily basis.
‘To date more than 14,000 who have arrived in Ireland have been referred to the International Protection Accommodations Service for accommodation.’