Health Ministry launches meningitis immunisation drive

The Ministry of Health in the Central African Republic (CAR) and its partners began on Tuesday a massive anti-meningitis immunisation drive in the northwestern town of Batangafo and surrounding areas in Ouham Province, where an outbreak of the disease has been reported, an official told IRIN. "We sent 60,000 doses of vaccines to the area on Saturday," Dr. Abel Namssenmo, the ministry's director of preventive medicine and disease control, said. He said a team from the ministry arrived on Saturday in Batangafo, 386 km north of the capital, Bangui, to inform local populations of the problem and to urge them to report for vaccination. Italian charity Cooperazione Internazionale, which has been distributing drugs to health facilities in the northwestern province of Ouham and Ouham Pende Province in the west since June 2003, first launched a meningitis alert in late February. Medicos Sin Fronteras also sent a team to investigate the outbreak and treat detected cases. So far, the number of infected people has not been made available as investigations continue. Like other northern towns, health services in Batangafo were interrupted between October 2002 and March 2003 when the rebels loyal to current leader Francois Bozize fought government forces. During the rebellion, health facilities were looted and vandalised and health personnel fled. Children were not vaccinated until October 2003, when the International Committee of the Red Cross distributed vaccine storage freezers to hospitals. Consequently, measles, meningitis and polio epidemics were reported in the north. The Special Humanitarian Adviser for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs on the CAR, Ramiro Lopes Da Silva, who has been touring the country since 29 February, told IRIN on Sunday that he would call for the mobilisation of funds to enable the UN World Health Organization to urgently carry out an epidemiological control drive nationwide.