Measles vaccination drive reaches 90 percent of children

A nationwide campaign to vaccinate 750,000 children against measles in The Gambia has been a resounding success, health officials said on Wednesday. "We are very glad with the response we got. We are still compiling the figures, but at least 90 percent of our target was attained," Robert Nimson, deputy manager of the Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI), told IRIN. The campaign to immunise all children aged from nine months to 15 years against measles was launched on 8 December. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO) donated US $500,000 towards the cost. "The launch of the nationwide campaign is proof of the Gambian government's commitment to eradicating measles mortality," UNICEF Representative Cheryl Gregory Faye said at the launch of the exercise last week. She said that of all vaccine-preventable diseases none was more deadly than measles. At the same ceremony, Health Minister Yankuba Gassama said: "Our objective is to reduce measles morbidity by 90 percent and measles mortality by 95 percent by the year 2005." Gassama said measles was one of nine diseases that the Health Ministry was vaccinating against. The others were polio, tuberculosis, diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, yellow fever, influenza and hepatitis B. "We haven't seen a single polio case since 2000, and, with the exception of a few cases of Tuberculosis, we are on course to eliminating all the other diseases by 2005," Nimson told IRIN. James Mwanzia, the WHO Representative in Gambia moved to allay fears about the safety of the vaccine being used, before the latest drive to innoculate against measles began. "The vaccine has been tested, tested and tested again to make sure it meets WHO safety standards before being used on children, so it's extremely safe," he said. However, despite this assurance, vaccination teams still reported meeting some resistance during the exercise. "Our teams were not allowed to carry out vaccinations in three schools because the school administrators said they needed the prior consent of the children's parents," said Karamba Keita, a divisional health officer. The Health Ministry deployed 225 teams of five people each to carry out the 10-day measles vaccination campaign. They also gave Vitamin A supplements to children aged between nine months and five years to prevent possible blindness.