WHO Alerts To Measles Outbreak In Nigeria, Others

By
Kazeem Tunde
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A baby girl watches a health worker inject a vaccine against measles into her arm at a hospital in Bossangoa, the town where a national immunization campaign is being launched. The Government, UNICEF and partner NGOs are providing vaccines against measles to children under five at 885 locations around the country.In December 2008 in the Central African Republic, a Government-launched immunization campaign supported by UNICEF and several NGOs administered measles vaccines to over 660,000 children under the age of five. As part of the campaign, UNICEF also distributed soap and insecticide-treated mosquito nets to over 740,000 children and their mothers. The efforts aim to improve child survival in one of the world’s least developed countries, where access to health care and clean water is now also disrupted by an ongoing civil conflict. Over 17 per cent of children die before their fifth birthdays, many from malnutrition, waterborne diseases or vaccine-preventable illnesses. In the past year, UNICEF has responded to multiple health crises in the country, including yellow fever outbreaks, by supporting hand-washing campaigns and immunization programmes. The immunization campaign against measles was launched in Bossangoa, a town in the conflict-affected north-western region.

WHO Alerts To Measles Outbreak In Nigeria, Others

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has alerted to major and ongoing outbreak of measles in Angola, Cameroon, Chad, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Philippines, South Sudan, Sudan and Thailand.

The latest preliminary reports, published Monday by the WHO, warned that measles outbreak continues to spread rapidly around the world with millions of people globally at risk of the disease.

According to the health body, in the first six months of 2019, reported measles cases are the highest they have been in any year since 2006, with outbreak straining health care systems, and leading to serious illness, disability, and deaths in many parts of the world.

There have been almost three times as many cases reported to date in 2019 as there were at this same time last year.

This follows successive yearly increase since 2016, indicating a concerning and continuing upsurge in the overall measles burden worldwide.

According to the WHO, for the period of January 1 through July 31, 2019, 182 countries reported 364,808 measles cases. For this same period last year, 129,239 measles cases were reported from 181 countries.

For the current 2019 period, the WHO African Region has recorded a 900 per cent (that is a 10-fold increase), the European Region 120 per cent (more than two-fold increase), the Eastern Mediterranean Region 50 per cent (1.5-fold increase), the Western Pacific Region 230 per cent (a three-fold increase); the South-East Asia Region and the Region of the Americas each saw a 15 per cent decrease in reported cases.

The WHO said that the largest outbreak in Nigeria and others was due to low measles vaccination coverage, currently or in the past, which has left large numbers of people vulnerable to the disease.

At the same time, protracted outbreaks are occurring even in countries with high national vaccination rates.

This results from inequities in vaccine coverage, and gaps and disparities between communities, geographic areas, and among age-groups. When enough people who are not immune are exposed to measles, it can very quickly spread.

According to the report, the reasons for people not being vaccinated vary significantly between communities and countries, including lack of access to quality healthcare or vaccination services, conflict and displacement, misinformation about vaccines, or low awareness about the need to vaccinate.

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