HEALTHY START
FOR REFUGEE CHILDREN
Help us deliver
essential health services to one million children.
All children deserve to feel safe, healthy, and hopeful for the future, no matter who they are or where they live.
With nearly 47 million forcibly displaced children globally, refugee children are among the most marginalized, at-risk people. Forced to flee their homes due to conflict, persecution, and climate disasters, they often find themselves in overcrowded refugee camps or unfamiliar environments with limited access to basic necessities, including protective health services. This leaves them vulnerable to preventable diseases, malnutrition, and even death.
Healthy Start for Refugee Children is a special initiative of Shot@Life and United to Beat Malaria, global health campaigns of the United Nations Foundation, that, in partnership with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), aims to deliver essential health services to one million refugee and displaced children living in East Africa. The success of this two-year fundraising campaign will not only ensure refugee children receive the health services they urgently need, but also deliver related health education and strengthen health systems so host countries may better meet the needs of displaced families moving forward.
Every child deserves a chance. Partner with us to help give more refugee children a healthy start.
Children like Samar have been displaced due to conflict and are vulnerable to disease.
Children like Queenie have traveled hundreds of miles to receive essential vaccines.
Children everywhere deserve a healthy start to life, no matter what.
Our Region of Focus
East Africa hosts the most refugees and internally displaced people on the continent. Millions in the region have fled their homes due to conflict and climate-related crises with worsening prospects in 2024. Displaced families are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance and host countries are understandably straining to meet the needs.
Thanks to highly praised, open-door policies, Ethiopia and Uganda are top refugee-hosting countries in Africa with refugees and asylum seekers from 27 countries, primarily from South Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sudan. South Sudan, the world’s youngest nation with already fragile social service systems, has two million internally displaced people and hosts more than 350,000 refugees (mainly from neighboring Sudan due to civil war).
Unfortunately, in addition to the challenge of hosting millions of displaced people, East African host countries face compounding crises. Ethiopia and South Sudan are experiencing their own internal conflicts, displacing many within their own borders. The entire region is additionally experiencing its worst spate of floods and drought in decades, causing food and water insecurity and a rise in the number of malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
Severe overcrowding in refugee settlements and gaps in the delivery of protective health services also leave many at risk. Children are particularly vulnerable and comprise more than half of East Africa’s refugee population. With the Healthy Start for Refugee Children campaign, we aim to deliver urgently needed health services — including malaria prevention, diagnosis, and treatment tools; and immunizations against deadly, infectious diseases — to protect them.