The number of measles affected children is rising day by day in government run hospitals of federal capital. It has been learnt that 4 to 5 affected kids were being admitted in Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) while score of children were being examined in OPD on daily basis.
In PIMS four more children between the ages of three to four years old coming from Bara Kahu, Tarlie and Pind Paria were admitted in the isolation ward while since the beginning of January, 42 children have been admitted to the isolation ward.
Meanwhile, approximately ten measles affected children are getting treatment in emergency and OPD in Polyclinic Hospital on daily basis Spokesperson of Polyclinic, Doctor Sharif Istori, claimed that children who had been vaccinated had also been infected with the disease however their cases were not as complicated as those children who had not receive any vaccine.. He advised the parents to get their children vaccinated to reduce the risk of complication from this disease. Three consecutive years of flooding and a decade of insecurity in mean millions of children have gone unvaccinated and are so badly malnourished they are unable to resist infections.
At the same time, the population has become suspicious of vaccination teams.
Maryam Yunus, of the World Health Organisation (WHO), said 103 children had died from complications of measles, such as pneumonia or diarrhoea, between January 1 and 19.
The worst hit province was Sindh, she said, which recorded 63 deaths and which was very badly affected by floods in 2010, 2011 and 2012.
“The number is huge,” she said. “The basic problem is that we have a very low routine rate of immunisation all over the country because there are security issues, displaced populations, and other factors – such as malnourishment in Sindh – which are all contributing to the problem.”
The number of cases has rocketed in recent years, from 64 deaths in 2011 to 300 last year, underlining the difficulties faced by health workers in tackling preventable diseases.
Their work was also undermined by a CIA programme in 2011, which used a hepatitis vaccination campaign as part of a ruse to track down Osama bin Laden. Many people have been suspicious of vaccination teams ever since.
Nine health workers were shot dead at the end of last year, in an apparently coordinated campaign against polio vaccinators.
As a result Pakistan seems as far away as ever of eradicating the disease, raising fears that it could act as a reservoir to reinfect other parts of the world. This week Egypt announced it will conduct an emergency polio drive after the virus was found in sewage in the capital, Cairo, despite the disease not being seen for eight years. The WHO said the wild polio was of the same strain as that found in Pakistan prompting calls for travellers to be vaccinated as they left the South Asian country.
