On 14 March 2018 in southern Afghanistan, a small girl being carried has been vaccinated by Afia’s team. Afia [NAME CHANGED], 19 (not pictured), is one of 70,000 committed polio workers in Afghanistan. She works with one of the largest female workforces in Afghanistan: a national team, supported by both UNICEF and the World Health Organization, fighting polio. Afia’s job is to educate families about polio and to encourage vaccination. Female polio workers are critical because only women are allowed to access a family’s home to check that every infant child has been vaccinated. Afia says that if she wasn’t eradicating polio, her parents would force her to give up her education and get married. “I am not just saving children’s lives – I am saving mine,” she says. While most women are confined to their homes, Afia travels fearlessly throughout her community because she believes that no child should be paralyzed by polio. In 2018, southern Afghanistan has the highest number of polio cases in the world. Afghanistan is just one of three countries - including Nigeria and Pakistan - that still carries the polio virus. Inaccessible areas and distrust hamper eradication efforts. In March 2018, polio workers vaccinated 9.9 million children across Afghanistan. During the polio vaccination campaign, over 8.9 million children were also given Vitamin A to help maintain a strong immune system and reduce incidences of diarrhoea and measles. Vitamin A supplements can improve a child’s chance of survival by 12 to 24 per cent in Afghanistan.
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