Limited immunisation campaign launched after measles outbreak

A limited measles immunisation campaign has been launched in Nairobi following an outbreak of the disease in a suburb of the capital city, health authorities said on Friday.

The campaign targets children under the age of five and is confined within Eastleigh, a downmarket suburb east of the city centre with a considerable number of refugees from Somalia, said an official in the disease management unit of the ministry of health who asked not to be named.

He said that about 20 cases of the disease had been reported this month in Eastleigh.

Measles epidemics are rare in Kenya because most babies are vaccinated against the disease at post-natal clinics. The health ministry official said the latest cases in Nairobi are likely to have originated from neighbouring Somalia, whose health services collapsed as a result of years of civil war and lack of an effective national government since 1991.

In a related development, the health ministry has said that it would carry out the first round of an emergency polio vaccination in Nairobi on 5-9 November. The campaign would target some 334,800 children below the age of five, including those who had completed their polio vaccinations earlier, the ministry said in a statement issued on Wednesday.

Kenya decided to undertake the polio immunisation campaign after outbreaks of the disease were reported in neighbouring countries, including Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

The first round of the emergency vaccination exercise was conducted in 12 high-risk districts in Northeast, Eastern and Coast Provinces. The provinces are close to Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan. A total of 236,000 children under the age of five were reached during the campaign. Some 110,000 children also received measles vaccines during the exercise.