TEHRAN – In an effort to ensure Iran’s health system is strong and ready to protect everyone, especially the most vulnerable, when a crisis strikes, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has procured portable tents and rapid-response backpacks.

It is a step forward to ensure that children, women, and everyone in need can access medical care during a disaster or emergency. They are focusing on two projects to help people immediately, the UNICEF website announced in a press release on November 4.

1. Portable Emergency Health Tents

When an earthquake or flood hits, regular clinics can be damaged. To fix this, UNICEF is buying special, easy-to-use Primary Health Care (PHC) Emergency Portable Tents.

Here’s why these tents are important:

Care for Everyone: They make sure people still get basic medical care, and they are specially set up to help pregnant women and even assist with giving birth.

Ready to Go: They are lightweight and designed to be set up very quickly, even in remote or hard-to-reach areas.

Full Clinic in a Tent: Each tent is fully equipped, like a small hospital unit. It can give essential health services to about 200 people every single day.

They’ve been tested! This idea worked great after the Kermanshah earthquake, and now 10 tents are being delivered to different areas.

2. Quick-Action Backpacks for Health Teams

Emergencies can also cause the rapid spread of diseases (epidemics). To stop this, UNICEF has procured rapid response backpacks.

These backpacks let health teams:

Be Fast Diagnosers: They contain tools and equipment to quickly investigate a disease outbreak and determine its cause.

Give First Aid: They have essential supplies for giving immediate first aid and basic care to affected people.

Go Anywhere: They are lightweight and easy to carry, so health workers can quickly reach people in remote areas, even where clinics are broken.

Keep Working: These allow health workers to continue providing care and looking for problems for several days without needing to return to a main clinic.

UNICEF is making sure these quick-action backpacks are delivered to health teams, and they will also train the staff on how to use them best.

Supporting health ministry

One of UNICEF’s top priorities is to support the country in adding new vaccines to the immunization program to protect children against more diseases and reduce their mortality, ISNA quoted Mohammad Eslami, an official with UNICEF, as saying.

He made the remarks on October 12, while addressing a workshop on immunization and vaccine-preventable diseases in Kerman province, ISNA reported.

Despite sanctions, UNICEF is doing its utmost to provide the vaccines needed and to assist the Ministry of Health to ensure that no child is left behind, the official added.

Highlighting the importance of cold chain systems, Eslami said the main objective is to provide cold chain equipment to preserve the potency of the vaccines.

Currently, the cold chain conditions in the country are good, and the Ministry of Health, with the support of UNICEF, is providing new, standard cold storage facilities to install in areas without out cold chain system.

UNICEF has also provided 17 standard refrigerated vehicles for transporting vaccines, at a safe temperature range, to different parts of the country, he added.

The official went on to say that families and children should learn about the key role of vaccination in preventing life-threatening diseases. Therefore, teaching target groups is among UNICEF’s main activities that will be implemented this year, Eslami further noted.

For his turn, Omid Zamani, an official with the WHO, lauded the country’s achievements in immunization programs and said vaccine coverage in Iran is around 97 percent, which is satisfactory.

However, in some border areas and areas inhabited by migrants, children and adults may not have adequate access to vaccination. So, it is essential that the country accurately identifies and covers these areas, as well, he said.

Referring to Rotavirus and pneumococcal vaccines added to the national immunization program last year, the official said that in the next five years, three more vaccines will be introduced to the national immunization program.

MT/MG