Uganda has on Wednesday embarked on a campaign to immunize more than 18 million children against measles and rubella, which amounts to 43 percent of the country’s population.
Among them, 8.2 million children younger than 9 months or 20.5 percent of the population, will also receive the oral polio vaccine.
This follows outbreaks of measles that have been reported across many districts across Uganda in the past three years.
At the same time, polio remains a daunting threat, given evidence of vaccine-
derived strains circulating in neighbouring countries.
The 18 million dollar five-day mass immunization campaign, funded by the government of Uganda, GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, the United Nations Children’s Fund; and the World Health Organization intends to tackle these three public health challenges.
The campaign, to be conducted in schools for the first three days and in communities for the last two days, targets all children younger than 15 years, whether previously immunized or not, in order to interrupt circulation of these diseases.
The campaign will also launch and introduce the measles-rubella vaccine into the country’s routine immunization schedule.
According to Dr Jane Ruth Aceng Uganda’s Minister for Health.the mass campaign provides opportunity to intensify sensitization of communities on measles, rubella and polio as well as disease surveillance and to investigate any unreported but suspected cases of these diseases.
She says it also seeks to address the declining trend in routine immunization coverage in the country.
World Health Organization (WHO) Country Representative to Uganda, Dr Yonas Tegegn Woldemariam says this is one of the biggest campaigns to be implemented in Africa and probably in the world.
He says only 13 out of 47 countries in WHO Africa region are on track to achieve measles elimination and hopes the Uganda immunisation campaign will make the country the 14th nation.
Rubella also known as German measles is a viral infection that causes a red rash on the body.
Aside from the rash, people with German measles usually have fever and swollen lymph nodes.
The infection can spread from person to person through contact with droplets from an infected person’s sneeze or cough.
Measles on the other hand is a childhood infection caused by a virus.
Once quite common, measles can now almost always be prevented with a vaccine but can be serious and even fatal for small children.
While death rates have been falling worldwide as more children receive the measles vaccine, the disease still kills more than 100,000 people a year, most under the age of 5.
CN/as/APA