Plans to immunise children against measles in the south

Relief agencies are preparing a comprehensive immunisation campaign against measles in southern Sudan, in order to reduce the deadly impact of the disease among young children, a UN spokesperson told IRIN on Thursday. "Measles is the number-one killer among preventable diseases in south Sudan," said Ben Parker, communications officer for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Nairobi, Kenya. Martin Opoka, southern Sudan early-warning coordinator for the World Health Organization (WHO), said 21 outbreaks of measles had been recorded across the region in 2004. Yambio, a town on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, had witnessed one of the most substantial outbreaks, during which over 500 children were hospitalised. UNICEF and WHO were planning to launch their campaign in the Equatoria region in southern Sudan during the second half of 2005, followed by a programme in Bahr el Ghazal and greater Upper Nile in 2006. The whole campaign would target about 4.4 million children, aged 15 years and under. "Unless you reach an immunisation coverage of 90 percent or more, you will continue to have outbreaks all over the country," Brigitte Toure, UNICEF’s health coordinator for south Sudan, warned. Routine immunisation data for southern Sudan showed that measles coverage for children under the age of five stood at 7 percent in 2001, 11 percent in 2002 and 16 percent in 2003, according to UNICEF. The agency said measles surveillance in the region had improved during the past three years, although outbreak reports showed that the disease had been on the rise. Some 364 cases were reported in 2002, compared with 649 in 2003 and 1,092 cases during the first half of 2004. "For the time being we are focusing our campaign on the SPLM/A [Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army]-held areas, but by the time the campaign happens, we hope to be able to access areas that are currently controlled by the government as well," Parker said. "The peace allows us to think bigger and be more ambitious, and do things we could not do before because of insecurity and instability." An additional aim of the measles campaign, and the ongoing polio-campaign, was to create local capacity to enable ongoing immunisation through training and the supply of materials. "We hope that this effort will develop into a routine immunisation capacity for a number of preventable diseases," Toure said. "Thousands of lives will potentially be saved by this campaign." The campaign’s target group of children between six months and 15 years old represents about 49 percent of southern Sudan's 7.5 million people. On Wednesday, the UN’s Advance Mission in Sudan said that 37 cases of measles had been reported in West Darfur, and eight cases in South Darfur. A supplementary measles-immunisation campaign, targeting children from six months to 14 years of age, had begun in the two locations that had reported most of cases - Kass in South Darfur, and Kanderni in West Darfur – said the UN report.