Anti-measles campaign continuing in some areas

The Kenyan government-sponsored anti-measles campaign, which has been in progress since 17 June, has been partially extended until early next week to reach previously impassable areas. Although reports indicate that over 95 per cent of the coverage has been achieved, heavy rains earlier in the week stopped the campaign from reaching parts of the Kerio Valley, about 300 km north of the capital, Nairobi, and areas close to the border with Uganda. "We have learned so much from our previous campaigns against the polio virus that most the problems were easily solved, but the rain caused landslides and cut off access to some roads," Dr Stanley Sonoiya, the manager of the Kenya Expanded Programme for Immunisation, told IRIN on Thursday. "We also have targeted those Somali refugees who are currently in the Dadaab refugee camp [in northeastern Kenya]. Other organisations had administered the measles vaccinations a couple of months ago, but there are new refugees there now, and our goal was to reach 56,000. So we ran into a two-day delay when trying to explain [to the refugees] that all children currently staying in Kenya needed to be vaccinated. We eventually got through, but it put us a bit behind schedule," Sonoiya said. Abbas Gullet, the secretary-general of the Kenya Red Cross Society, told IRIN that the initiative's great success was the product of the coordination between the partner organisations, namely the UN Children's Fund, the World Health Organisation, the American Red Cross and the UN Foundation and Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. "Personally, I am very happy that we were all able to work together. There is not a single organisation today that has all the resources to do everything. Every organisation adds value," he said. According to Sonoiya, the long-term effects of the immunisation campaign will be reassessed in two to five years. "We will not target the same children [nine months to 14 years] again, [we will do so] only if it is to correct a gap in coverage. We will try to maintain a 90 per cent immunisation rate, but if we missed some, then we will go back around 2007," he said. The first anti-measles initiative was launched in 2001 and focused on Uganda, Tanzania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo, Cameroon, Ghana and Benin. This year, in addition to Kenya, Ghana, Benin, Cameroon, Tanzania, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Swaziland will all be targeted.