Measles cases increase by nearly 700 percent in Kano

Measles infections rose by 670 percent in northern Nigeria’s biggest city, Kano, in the first 21 weeks of this year over the same period in 2000, the international medical organisation, Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF), said on Tuesday.

The results of MSF research at two hospitals in Kano and of a joint surveillance by MSF and Kano State’s Ministry of Health show there were 16,263 cases in the first 21 weeks of 2001 compared to 2,111 cases in the same period last year. This is an indication of a general rise in the incidence of the disease in most of northern Nigeria.

“Cases of measles have been rising since November last year,” Dr Gebrewold Petros, medical coordinator of MSF in Nigeria, told IRIN. “They have started dropping now.” While MSF did not provide fatality figures, local newspapers quoting health officials from different parts of northern Nigeria indicate that the disease also claimed more lives.

Cases of measles usually increase during the dry, hot season, which begins around November and lasts until about May. They generally drop with the onset of the rainy season. Petros said it was not yet possible to say why incidence of the disease rose dramatically this year. He said all partners now fighting the epidemic would participate in a study into the reasons for the increase.

Local and international medical workers involved in immunisation in parts of Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north have reported some resistance to vaccination by local people this year. They have attributed it to suspicions fuelled by some radical Muslims in the area that the vaccines were either tainted with HIV or were meant to sterilise people under an alleged Western conspiracy to control African population growth.