Measles campaign to proceed despite monsoon floods

A major effort in Pakistan to immunise 63 million children against measles will proceed as planned this week, despite recent heavy rains and flooding in the south of the country which took the lives of more than 100 people and affected hundreds of thousands.

“The campaign is set to go ahead on Monday [2 July] in seven of the eight scheduled districts of Balochistan,” Melissa Corkum, a spokeswoman for the UN Children’s Agency (UNICEF) told IRIN in the capital, Islamabad. She added that heavy rain has delayed the campaign in Balochistan’s Khuzdar district until August.

The drive is the largest public health campaign of its kind in the world, according to Corkum.

The campaign will be implemented in phases by Pakistan’s Ministry of Health, in conjunction with UNICEF and the World Health Organization. By March 2008, all children between nine months old and 13 years are expected be immunised against measles in schools, health facilities and outreach centres by trained health workers using disposable syringes.

The main challenge, Corkum said, is ensuring that all parents are aware of the campaign.

“This campaign is very different from polio, where the teams go house-to-house every four weeks,” she said. “It is critical that all sectors of the community – health workers, teachers, religious leaders, media, and community leaders - work together to ensure that all children are protected by the lifesaving campaign. We will protect children from the needless death and disability caused by measles.”

More than 21,000 children die from measles, an acute and highly contagious viral disease, every year in Pakistan, Corkum added.

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