Statement by the UN Resident Coordinator in BiH, dr. Ingrid Macdonald: "The pandemic is not over: we need public health and social measures that ensure that schools are last to close and first to open"

"We are seeing number of infections rising across Bosnia and Herzegovina. This is not unexpected. As we have seen this rise across the world and in Europe and these numbers are going up with this so called 4th wave.

At this time we know we need to double down on the measures that may help save lives. But these measures also need to be balanced because one of the things United Nations in Bosnia.. have always advocated for is balancing public health with social-economic impact.

And in area of education we see that most acutely. For the last two years children’s education has been disrupted. They’ve been in ad out of school and often going online. This is not healthy for children and we are worried what sort of impact this will have.

What is also important is that it’s not only about education when it comes to school. Its what going to school means for their child and how they socially integrate, how are they around their peers, are they having fun, their mental health.

So we need to keep schools open. One of the ways to ensure that is to ensure everyone follows the basic measures. We know that wearing masks works. We know that if you wash your hands and maintain distance this can be very effective in limiting spreading the virus.

Most importantly, we are seeing how critical vaccines are. Bosnia and Herzegovina has enough vaccines at the moment so that you can all go and get your vaccination shot. It is terribly important that you see take this opportunity.

What we see from across the world is that when people do not take the vaccine, they are much more likely to go to hospital and have much more serious effects. So please do take this opportunity and get the vaccine

We are in this together. They only way out of this is together.