UNICEF Prague launches project to vaccinate children around the world
There are currently some 11 million children dying around the world every year because they fail to get vaccinations that are necessary for them to grow into healthy adults and survive the harsh conditions they have been born into. The United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, vaccinates 500 million children against the most threatening diseases annually. Its branch in Prague has launched a new project that allows children and adults help combat mortal diseases. More from Dita Asiedu:
"Adopt a doll and save a child" is what the Czech branch of UNICEF is currently asking Czech citizens to do. Children around the country have been asked to make dolls and give them up for "adoption" to adults for six hundred Czech crowns each to be used in the foundation's vaccination programme. More than 150 schools, 200 individuals and even old people's homes and psychiatric hospitals have responded to the project. Pavla Gomba is the director of UNICEF in Prague:
"Children are quite creative and we didn't want to put any limitation on what the doll should look like. What we provided was only the patron for the doll and we were quite surprised by all the different nationalities that the dolls represented. We have Japanese, Chinese, African, Latin American. All nationalities in the world. From the responses we've had so far, I think the selling part will be as successful as the production part."
Each doll was given to UNICEF to be sold. Once bought by an adult the so-called "parent" - the creator of the doll - is notified.
Jirka Vitos is one of the hundreds of Czech children who was delighted to hear that he had saved a child. He pointed out that he and his other male friends would never come close to dolls but made an exception because it was for a good cause. According to Mrs Gomba, every doll also holds a special birth certificate:
"We wanted to draw attention to another UNICEF project. It's the birth registration programme. In many developing countries children are not registered at birth and that, of course, is detrimental to their access to education, health, social care, etc. Each doll has a birth certificate with the name, date of birth, nationality and also the name of its parent."
