Massive measles vaccination campaign targets 35 million children under-15

Nigeria plans a massive vaccination drive against measles this year, targeting all of the 35 million children aged between nine months and 15 years in a bid to eliminate deaths due to the disease, the national immunisation agency said. It will be the country’s first national campaign and will focus special attention on the mainly Muslim north, which is particularly prone to measles. The National Programme on Immunisation (NPI) said in a weekend statement that 35 million doses of the measles vaccine as well as syringes and safety boxes were in the country ready for the 6-10 December campaign, organised with backing from the World Health Organisation (WHO). According to the NPI, 35,856 children were affected by measles between January and August 2004, making measles a leading cause of child illness in Africa’s most populous country, which has more than 126 million people. “Reaching every child 9 months to 15 years will be essential to ensuring measles deaths are reduced to zero. We cannot afford to leave one child un-immunised,” Health Minister Eyitayo Lambo was quoted as saying in the statement. Dere Awosika, head of the immunisation agency, said it had become unacceptable to the government that “despite the availability of a safe and effective vaccine, measles remains a leading cause of death among young children across Nigeria”. Ahead of the exercise six laboratories across the country have begun case surveillance studies with technical support from WHO to ensure the most vulnerable areas are covered by immunisation, the NPI said. According to the agency, special attention will be paid to the mainly Muslim north of Nigeria, where higher rates of rural poverty and suspicion of vaccination in general, has led to lower rates of immunisation coverage. Measles killed 561 children between January and mid-March – the peak transmission season - in Nigeria, according to WHO. An overwhelming majority of the deaths occurred in Nigeria’s northern region, where doctors said people are wary of vaccinations largely for religious reasons. Of 23,575 cases recorded nationwide at the time, WHO said more than 90 percent of the total were in the north. Traditionally-low immunisation rates in Nigeria’s mainly-Muslim north have worsened in recent years on the heels of a widespread resistance to polio vaccination whipped up by radical preachers claiming such campaigns were a Western plot to sterilize Muslims and infect them with HIV/AIDS. In 2003, Kano state began a polio vaccination boycott which continued for 11 months until July last year, coming to an end only after tests were conducted in Nigeria and abroad by President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government to reassure governor Ibrahim Shekarau of the safety of the vaccines. Three other northern states also briefly banned the vaccine. While deaths from measles are in decline globally, dropping by 39 percent from 873,000 deaths in 1999, to 530,000 in 2003, WHO and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) say Africa still has the highest incidence of the disease. WHO and UNICEF are trying to halve measles deaths in Africa in comparison with the 1999 toll by the end of 2005 and are trying to enforce routine measles immunisation for at least 90 percent of under-fives. While measles immunisations have been carried out on a regional basis in Nigeria in the past, December’s campaign will be the country’s first nationwide measles vaccination.