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SAMOA-HEALTH-MEASLES-EPIDEMIC-VIRUS
Samoa shuts down in unprecedented battle against measles crisis
WELLINGTON, Dec 5, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Samoa entered a two-day lockdown
Thursday as authorities launched an unprecedented mass vaccination campaign
to contain a deadly measles outbreak that has devastated the Pacific island
nation.
Officials ordered all businesses and non-essential government services to
close, shut down inter-island ferry services and told private cars to keep
off the roads.
Residents were advised to stay in their homes and display a red flag if
they were not yet immunised as hundreds of vaccination teams fanned out
across the nation of 200,000 in the early hours of the morning.
The operation, carried out under emergency powers invoked as the epidemic
took hold last month, is a desperate bid to halt an inexorably rising death
toll that reached 62 on Thursday, most of them young children.
“I’ve seen mass mobilisation campaigns before, but not over an entire
country like this,” UNICEF’s Pacific island chief Sheldon Yett told AFP.
“That’s what we’re doing right now. This entire country is being
vaccinated.”
Immunisation rates in Samoa were about 30 percent before the outbreak and
have risen to more than 55 percent since a compulsory mass vaccination
campaign began a fortnight ago.
Yett said the aim of this week’s two-day drive was to push the rate above
90 percent, which should help curb the current outbreak and stop future
epidemics.
He said the normally busy streets of the capital Apia were almost deserted
early Thursday.
“It’s very, very quiet out here. I can just hear a few barking dogs. The
streets are empty. There are no cars,” he said.
“People are staying at home waiting for the vaccination campaign. The
teams are getting their supplies together and getting ready to go out.”
Even Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi’s residence had a red
flag fluttering outside it, with the leader saying his nephew had recently
arrived from Australia and needed a measles shot. Malielegaoi said he was
angered by anecdotal reports that some parents were encouraging their
children to hide from the vaccination teams to avoid the mandatory
immunisation injection.
“The message is that we have vaccinated a lot of people and they are OK,”
he told reporters.
“The only cure for this is vaccination… having your children vaccinated
is the only way.”
Children are the most vulnerable to measles, which typically causes a rash
and fever but can also lead to brain damage and death.
The latest figures show that 54 of the 62 dead were aged four or less and
infants account for most of the 4,217 cases recorded since the outbreak began
in mid-October.
There have also been measles epidemics in neighbouring Fiji and Tonga, but
higher immunisation rates mean they have been more easily contained, with no
fatalities.
BSS/AFP/FI/0826 hrs