This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.

‘Lifesaving’ vaccine call for all refugees from Ukraine: WHO

Two weeks into the Ukraine crisis caused by the Russian invasion, the UN health agency issued a warning on Thursday that all those who’ve fled the country must receive basic vaccine protection.

Since the conflict began on 24 February, 2.3 million people have fled across Ukraine’s borders.

“Vaccination against diseases such as COVID-19, measles and polio is especially important” for the most vulnerable population groups who are at risk of severe outcomes, said the World Health Organization’s Dr Siddhartha Datta.

As far as COVID-19 is concerned, this means “older adults and people with underlying health conditions and for routine vaccines, young children need to be up to date with all scheduled vaccine doses”, he explained.

Many countries in the European Region that are hosting refugees from Ukraine already offer vaccination services to children and adults.

Hungary, Poland, the Republic of Moldova and Romania in particular, have seen large numbers of refugees crossing the border from Ukraine.

WHO is already working with these and other countries to strengthen disease surveillance and ensure provision of immunization services in line with the policies of host countries.

UN’s Bachelet leads COVID-19 vaccine global equity call

Staying with COVID-19, the global failure to deliver enough vaccines to developing countries “is prolonging the pandemic” and causing tens of thousands of preventable deaths every week, the Human Rights Council heard on Thursday.

To date, more than 10.5 billion vaccine doses have been administered globally, said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, but the “grim reality” was that only around 13 per cent of people in low-income countries have been vaccinated, compared with almost 70 per cent in wealthier nations.

Head of the UN health agency, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, also insisted that inaction on vaccine inequity was responsible for the deaths of more than 60,000 people a week, as “countries with high vaccination rates are reopening while others with low vaccination rates and low testing rates have been left behind”.

Condemnation and solidarity from WHO’s Tedros over Ukraine hospital attack

To Ukraine, where there’s been swift condemnation following Wednesday’s bombardment of a maternity hospital in Mariupol, which reportedly claimed many lives, including children.

Speaking out against the attack, which comes two weeks since the start of the Russian invasion began, WHO’s Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus expressed solidarity with health workers still trying to save lives there.

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“In Ukraine, the health system is struggling with COVID-19 and dangerously low oxygen and medical supplies while war rages around them…I reiterate that attacks on hospitals, medical personnel and medical transports are forbidden under international humanitarian law; any such attacks are grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.”

Two thirds of households with children have lost income during pandemic

At least two-thirds of households with children have lost income since the COVID-19 pandemic hit two years ago.

That’s one of the findings of a new report from the UN children’s agency (UNICEF) and World Bank.

It presents findings from 35 countries and notes that households with three or more children were most likely to have struggled to make ends meet, with more than three-quarters seeing a reduction in earnings.

“Families cannot afford food or essential healthcare services, they cannot afford housing,” said the report, which described how the poorest households “are being pushed even deeper in poverty.”

The number of children living in poverty and without access to education, health, housing, nutrition, sanitation or water, soared to approximately 1.2 billion in 2020.

An estimated additional 100 million children were projected to have fallen into multidimensional poverty in 2021, UNICEF said, in a call for the rapid expansion of social welfare assistance, including cash transfers and child benefits for all.

Daniel Johnson, UN News.