SANAA, 8 June 2008 (IRIN) - The Yemeni government has intensified a campaign to spread awareness of the benefits of neonatal tetanus vaccinations to ensure the success of a second round of vaccinations that started on 7 June.

The first round of the campaign fell below its intended target because of the unwillingness of some women to take the vaccination due to their belief that it would harm them in some way.

"We faced a number of obstacles during the campaign's first round, which ran in mid-April," Essa Mohammed, head of the Ministry of Health's National Programme for Extensive Vaccination (NPEV), told IRIN.

"It is not only women who reject taking the vaccines; men also reject them. A husband can stop his wife from taking the vaccine. The first round had a 74 percent success rate, which was below the aspired target [over 80 percent]," Mohammed said.

Mohammed added that there were false rumours among the population that the tetanus vaccine actually caused tetanus as it is manufactured in foreign countries that could not be trusted. "We tried to get support from a number of women's organisations in spreading awareness. We also got support from preachers in mosques," he said.

Ghadah al-Haboub, deputy head of NPEV, said some women thought tetanus vaccines would cause sterility. "In our awareness campaigns we tell people that tetanus vaccines do not cause sterility and that any woman who has taken such vaccines can conceive," she told IRIN.

She added that other people thought the vaccines were only for married women when the term 'women of child-bearing age' was used in the first round of the campaign." In this round, we did not use this term to avoid confusion that only married women are targeted. Instead we say: 'All women from 15-45 years of age'," al-Haboub said.

Nearly a million women targetted

With 553 fixed teams and 1,290 mobile teams, Yemen's neonatal tetanus vaccination campaign is targetting 912,196 women in the governorates of Ibb, al-Dhalei, Lahj and al-Hudeidah. The second round is targetting 664,776 women and a third round will be undertaken in a few months' time.

Funded by the government, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI), the second round of the campaign has 764,450 vaccines allocated to it for the targeted areas.

According to UNICEF, Yemen is among 47 countries in the world which has yet to eliminate neonatal and maternal tetanus. NPEV said it will eliminate the disease by 2010.

"We look at tetanus as a fatal disease. Over 80 percent of tetanus cases die," NPEV's Mohammed said, adding that deaths often occurred in the home as medical help had not been sought. But the official could not give an exact figure on the number of tetanus cases in the country.

According to the WHO, tetanus is caused by the bacterium Clostridium tetani, the spores of which are widespread in the environment. The disease is caused by a neurotoxin produced by the bacteria when they grow in the absence of oxygen - often in dirty wounds or in the umbilical cord if it is cut with a non-sterile instrument. Tetanus is characterised by muscle spasms, initially in the jaw muscles.

maj/ar/ed

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