Somalia emergency polio vaccination campaign – in pictures

A young girl receives polio vaccination drops at a Mogadishu school. Adults will be vaccinated against the disease in the next round of the campaign, which is targeting 6 million people. Polio once paralysed and killed up to 500,000 people annually, but is now endemic in only three countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria
Photograph: Kate Holt/Unicef

A health worker ticks off the names of children who have been vaccinated. At least 41 cases have been reported in Somalia so far, according to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. There are fears that the disease – which is incurable and mainly affects children under the age of five – will spread quickly in the region without prompt action
Photograph: Kate Holt/Unicef

A polio vaccination is removed from its refrigerated box at a Unicef-run vaccination centre in Mogadishu, where most of the cases have occurred so far. During the emergency vaccination campaign, measures adopted by health workers have included door-to-door visits to ascertain whether people have been immunised
Photograph: Kate Holt/Unicef

The end of a child's fingertip is marked with a purple pen to indicate that he has been vaccinated. Experts believe that the number of children showing symptoms of paralysis means there are likely to be thousands more with polio who have yet to show symptoms. Both groups are capable of spreading the disease
Photograph: Kate Holt/Unicef

Abdi, eight, who caught polio during the last outbreak of the disease, walks towards his teacher in a makeshift classroom at a camp for internally displaced people in Mogadishu. Many children previously affected by the disease came from families living in camps consisting of basic shelters made of polythene sheets
Photograph: Kate Holt/Unicef

Tents are spread out at a camp for internally displaced persons in Mogadishu. It is feared that the new outbreak of polio will spread quickly among thousands of people who, displaced from their homes by conflict or famine, are forced to live in basic shelters in cramped conditions such as these
Photograph: Kate Holt/Unicef

Faisa Abdullahi, eight, also caught polio during the last outbreak in Somalia. She has lived with her family at an IDP camp since their cattle died, and now walks with the aid of sticks. 'Sometimes my legs are very sore and I cannot stand up,' she says. 'I was the only one in my family to get sick but at school three others are sick like me. Sometimes other children are not very nice about the sticks'
Photograph: Kate Holt/Unicef

A woman displaced by drought in 2011 sits with her two children at a settlement in Mogadishu. The last outbreak of polio, which began in 2005, left 228 children with some form of paralysis
Photograph: Kate Holt/Unicef

More than 20 years of civil war in Somalia have left many people in Mogadishu living in unsafe and unsanitary conditions. Despite an influx of foreign investment and many reconstruction projects, the city still lacks basic infrastructure
Photograph: Kate Holt/Unicef