7,500 children immunised against measles

The international NGO Medicos Sin Fronteras (MSF-Spain) immunised on Wednesday and Thursday a total of 7,560 children in Sibut, 185 km northeast of Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic (CAR). "We organised the mass immunisation campaign after receiving information that 22 cases of measles were detected in Sibut between 1 and 18 April," Annick Lacits, the MSF representative in CAR, told IRIN on Saturday. One death was reported during the same period. She said the campaign, in which local health personnel took part, reached at least 67 percent of the children aged between nine months and 15 years in Sibut and surrounding areas. Sibut has an estimated population of 18,000. Rebels loyal the current CAR president, Francois Bozize, had occupied the town in 2002. Later, it was taken over by forces loyal to ex-president Ange-Felix Patasse and their ally, the Mouvement de liberation du congo, a rebel group controlling the northwest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Bozize ousted Patasse in a coup on 15 March, following which thousands of Sibut residents fled into the bush. However, Lacits told IRIN that a majority of the Sibut residents had returned to their homes. "We left 2,400 doses of vaccines for those who were absent," she said. The Sibut immunisation campaign follows another by MSF in early March in Bouar, 454 km northwest of Bangui. Meanwhile, MSF-Spain has announced that it would end its emergency programmes in CAR by 31 May. It is expected to embark on new projects but these are yet to be determined. MSF has been operating in the CAR since 1997. It began emergency programmes in October 2002 after a failed coup attempt by Bozize. The MSF programmes included medical care of rape victims and support to 21 health facilities in the war-affected areas in Bangui and in the north of the country. Lacits said an Italian NGO, Cooperazione Internationale, UN agencies as well as the CAR government would take over the MSF programmes. "The situation has become stable at all levels," she said.