Vaccination campaign after measles outbreak

A major measles immunisation campaign is to be launched in northern Uganda on Monday after an outbreak in the area, health officials said. About 190 cases, including three deaths, have been reported among children in displaced persons' (IDP) camps in Pader district alone during the past three weeks, according to the Uganda National Expanded Programme on Immunisation (UNEPI). "We are launching mass measles campaigns starting on Monday that will at first cover five districts in northern Uganda, but will be scaled up eventually to cover more districts," said Issa Makumbi, UNEPI's programme manager. Health ministry spokesman Paul Kaggwa said the country needed to expand its measles vaccination coverage from about 86 percent currently to 95 percent to prevent frequent outbreaks of the disease. "We are doing an assessment of the situation, but there is an upsurge of measles in the country with 17 districts already reporting cases of the disease. The reason for this is that although we want our immunisation coverage at 95 percent, it is currently at an average 86 percent," said Kaggwa. There were some districts with coverage rates of as low as 55 percent, he added. Although reported cases in Uganda decreased from 40,000 in 2003 to less than 100 in 2005, due in part to national vaccination campaigns, measles continues to claim the lives of more Ugandan children than any other vaccine-preventable disease, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). UNICEF said in a statement on Thursday that it was carrying out a targeted measles immunisation campaign in response to the outbreak in IDP camps in Pader and that more than 9,200 children had been vaccinated. According to the UN World Health Organisation, measles is a major killer of young children, despite the availability of a safe and effective vaccine for the past 40 years. An estimated 454,000 people, the majority children, died from measles in 2004. The disease is an acute viral respiratory illness associated with high fever, rashes and vomiting.