Health ministry requests help to eradicate measles

The authorities in Tajikistan are appealing to the international community to assist in eliminating measles in the impoverished Central Asian state. "We are looking for additional donors," Shamsutdin Jobirov, head of the republic's immunisation centre, told IRIN from the capital, Dushanbe, on Wednesday. "As of today we have a budget deficit [for the campaign] of some US $1 million." His comments follow a recent statement by the Tajik Health Ministry, announcing the country's plan to eradicate measles in the former Soviet republic and the need for greater international assistance to achieve that goal. Jobirov estimated that the project to immunise some 2.8 million people out of a total population of 6.5 million would cost more than $3 million. Although the United Nations International Children's Fund (UNICEF), the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the World Health Organisation (WHO) and some other organisations had already provided help, including vaccines, insufficient funds remained to effectively conduct the two-week campaign in late September and early October, he added. An action plan with stage-by-stage immunisation activities had been prepared, Saidnazar Turkov, deputy head of the immunisation centre, said. "But there also needs to be a lot of preparatory work and since February we have been working on that," he added. All children of school age would be covered by the campaign. And in northern Soghd province the immunisation would be broader, including people up to 29 years old, the Tajik health official said, explaining that a number of elderly people in Soghd had been infected with measles in past years. The motivation behind the planned campaign is largely historical. "The situation regarding measles in the country was very complicated in 2002 and 2003, when there was an outbreak of the disease. Many people throughout Tajikistan got infected with measles," Turkov said. Concurring, Tarek Hussain, a project officer for UNICEF in Tajikistan, told IRIN that measles remained an important preventable health problem in Tajikistan, citing inadequate immunisation coverage and surveillance. According to the immunisation centre, in 2002 there were 925 officially registered cases of measles, while in 2003 that figure more than doubled, reaching more than 2,000. "These are only registered cases. The real figure could be some 5,000. So, this is a real problem," Turkov explained. "If we don't conduct this campaign, then every two years there will be outbreaks of the disease and we won't be able to reach the goal of eliminating it by 2010, which we coordinated with the WHO," he said. But with current shortages of funds to accomplish that task, both the Health Ministry and UNICEF are urging the international community to provide more help. "UNICEF and the Ministry of Health are calling for a greater partnership and requesting contributions from various organisations in terms of technical assistance, in cash and in-kind contributions," Hussain said. According to the WHO, measles remains the most deadly vaccine-preventable childhood disease. In 2000, it is estimated to have caused over 30 million illnesses and 770,000 deaths in the world. In the WHO European Region, these figures were 969,000 illnesses and 7,000 deaths.