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UN Foundation to give $33m for immunisation

STAFF CORRESPONDENT
The United Nation Foundation sponsored by media mogul Ted Turner will launch a massive public health campaign in Bangladesh and immunise 35 million children aged nine and ten.
The campaign against measles will begin from the next January and continue for about two years. The programme will be implemented at a cost of $33 million by 40,000 vaccinators and 1.5 lakh volunteers, said Ted Turner, chairman of the Turner Enterprise, also founder of CNN, at a press conference yesterday afternoon.
Turner withdrew most of his investment from CNN and started new business ventures.
The UN foundation funded several UN programmes in Bangladesh ranging from empowering adolescent girls and removing arsenic from tube wells in hundreds of villages, he said.
Other visiting board members including Gro Harlem Brundtland, former prime minister of Norway, Grameen Bank founder Dr Muhammad Yunus, advisor to the UN secretary general, Nafis Sadik, and president of the UN foundation Timothy E Wirth also spoke and responded to the queries of journalists.
Ted Turner who created the UN foundation in 1998 and contributed $1 billion to it told journalists that the immunisation programme
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will be implemented with the help of some other international donor agencies like American Red Cross, the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, UNICEF, World Health Organisation and the Bangladesh Government.
Responding to a question Turner said he was impressed by the natural beauty and the wonderful people in Bangladesh during his visit. He denied having any plan to invest in the Bangladesh media or in any other sector in the country.
"I don't have enough money to invest in Bangladesh media or in any other sector because I have started restaurant business in the USA," he said.
He did not get a chance to see the local electronic media but he read English newspapers and was amazed by seeing so many newspapers being published in Bangladesh.
He was also amazed by seeing the villagers using bio-gas for cooking purposes. During the visit the board members of the foundation met government, civic and business leaders and visited Grameen Bank offices and a village in Srinagar.
The UN foundation president Timothy E Wirth said the group had a meeting with Prime Minister Khaleda Zia in the morning where they discussed the immunisation programme to be launched.
Many other issues like violence, terrorism, bomb attacks and security
concerns also came up in the discussion, he said.
The team observed that problems related to radicalism exist everywhere in the world. Many religious leaders also already condemned the types of radical activities Bangladesh has been suffering from, he said.
The board meeting of the foundation takes place every year in a developing country. The scheduled meeting in Bangladesh was cancelled three times earlier.
"But this time the members were determined to come to Bangladesh despite the fact that the country has been experiencing series of bomb explosions," said Dr Muhammad Yunus, a member of the board.
Wirth said Bangladesh seems open to changes and has the ability to bring about changes in the society within a very short time. He mentioned the country's success in controlling population growth.
He also appreciated the role played by the Bangladesh Army personnel in the UN peacekeeping forces. The Bangladesh Army personnel went to dangerous places for peacekeeping where no army from other countries agreed to go, he pointed out.
The foundation is involved in various development activities in Bangladesh like eradication of polio, reduction of arsenic in groundwater, and resolving various problems faced by adolescent girls, he said.