11 July 2019

Health workers have started a massive measles vaccination campaign in north-east Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a region that’s in the grip of the second deadliest Ebola virus outbreak on record. 

UN Children’s Fund UNICEF said on Thursday that it aims to inoculate 67,000 children in Ituri province. 

They’re just a small fraction of the 400,000 people displaced by an upsurge in communal violence and clashes between Government forces and non-State armed groups in the resource-rich area. 

According to UNICEF, nearly 2,000 people have died from measles across DRC so far this year, more than two-thirds of them children under five. 

Latest health data from DRC point to around 115,000 cases of suspected measles in the country, far more than the 65,000 tally last year. 

Ebola a complicating factor in protecting the vulnerable 

Tackling the measles outbreak is complicated by the fact that its symptoms – fever, redness around the eyes, diarrhoea – are similar to those displayed by Ebola patients. 

On Wednesday, the DRC authorities reported that the latest Ebola outbreak – affecting Ituri and neighbouring North Kivu province - has killed 1,646 people since it began last August, while 683 people have recovered. 

To avoid infection with Ebola virus, measles vaccinators must wear surgical gowns to prevent contact with blood or other bodily fluids carrying the deadly haemorrhagic disease.