XUNICEF News and Views

By Rolf Carriere Psychological trauma insidiously interferes with the lives of countless millions—children and adults. Traumas are due to various types of violence, as shown in the Trauma Tree. Traumas invisibly inflict immense suffering and undermine health, development, and peace. If not treated, trauma may last a lifetime. And for many it does. But trauma needs no longer be the life sentence it was throughout most of history. Today effective, scalable treatments exist. Morality, enlightened self-interest, and the duty of care all compel us to make them widely available. Psychological trauma has devastating consequences on individuals, families, and whole communities. It ruins health, inhibits creativity, weakens productivity, harms educability and hampers well-being. It drives violence and that way it limits the space for peace. ‘Hurt people hurt people’, because unresolved trauma may produce anger, fantasies of revenge and lingering resentment that, at any time, could erupt again a...

In 1981 I had rejoined UNICEF, in New Delhi, after a 3-year stint with the World Bank in Washington DC during which I had been working on the design of a large-scale nutrition project in Tamil Nadu. David Haxton, newly appointed as Regional Director, had me first work for about two years as Regional Officer (which included Bhutan), but then asked me to head up the Health & Nutrition Section of the India office. One of the important health interventions then already underway in India (since 1978) was the Expanded Programme on Immunization which aimed to protect children against six diseases: measles, diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, tuberculosis and polio. A good start had been made (initially without measles), but, due to supply and demand constraints, coverage had stalled at around 20 percent, and so had energy and enthusiasm, even though the agreed global goal was to achieve 80 percent by 1990. A daunting task. I recall being invited for a week’s training at WHO Geneva for ‘s...