Holding an umbrella, medical records and her two-year-old daughter, Kani Fall dodged the brown puddles licking the hospital door, the last obstacle in a two-hour adventure in the rain to the nearest vaccination clinic in western Gambia.
Autumn waits with dozens of moms and toddlers in the flooded courtyard of Bundung Hospital. Then a doctor gave the impression with bad news. The hospital is running out of measles vaccines and it’s unclear when they’ll get more.
“They told me there is no vaccine. But I’m going back,” said Fall, 27, who had closed his catering business for the day to make the trip. “It’s for my daughter, it’s for her health,” she added, holding back tears of frustration.
The COVID-19 pandemic halted measles vaccination campaigns around the world in 2020 and 2021, leaving millions of young people unprotected from one of the world’s most contagious diseases, whose headaches come with blindness, pneumonia and death.
After what fitness experts are calling the biggest setback in a generation, 26 giant or disruptive measles outbreaks have erupted worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. A devastating outbreak in Zimbabwe has killed more than 700 young people this year, most commonly among devout sects. not in vaccines.
Today, African fitness systems remain vulnerable due to a lack of budget and manpower, especially in countries where shock and malnutrition make young people more vulnerable to deadly infections, according to Reuters interviews with more than a dozen disease experts, doctors and global fitness officials.
“We’ve never realized how many unvaccinated youth we’re seeing right now,” said Dr. Brown. Deblina Datta, leader of the global measles elimination effort at the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. U. S.
“I stood in bed for young people who were dying of measles, and it’s shocking to see. And it’s a preventable event. “
More than 45,000 cases have been reported in Africa this year, killing more than 2,300 people. That’s double the number of cases right now last year, when some persistent social distancing measures would have possibly slowed infections.
WHO and UNICEF introduced an awareness and fundraising crusade in 2020 to address vaccine gaps caused by the pandemic, especially in middle-income countries, but have raised almost no money, the agencies told Reuters.
The estimated shortfall for measles worldwide: at least $255 million. Covid, the war in Ukraine, food shortages and inflation have reduced donations from richer countries, he said.
“Our existing resources will be sufficient if countries increase their requests for the investment needed to respond to the growing number of measles outbreaks,” WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris said.
In a recent paper shared with governments and fitness organizations and reviewed via Reuters, the WHO defined 15 vaccination campaigns expected to begin in Africa in 2022 and 2023. But an October update showed that only 3 of the campaigns got off to a quick start. Start dates. The others were marked as 2022 or 2023, then “??”in the month and day section, through the WHO team.
Health officials at Gambia’s Bundung hospital said the shortage of measles vaccines is temporary, as a result of a surge in demand for regimen vaccines after a strike by fitness staff ended in July.
But it highlights how precarious underfunded fitness systems can be in countries already overburdened by Covid. Dozens of measles cases have emerged in Gambia this year, an increase from previous years. The country last held a national “catch-up” crusade in 2015 to succeed. in families in the most remote places who are unlikely to bring their children for immunization.
Another planned for 2020, however, resources were directed to COVID that year, said Shahid Mahbub Awan, Chief of Child Survival and Development at UNICEF Gambia. Said.
“It’s like a complete stop. One day everything happened and the next day it didn’t,” he said.
The crusade against measles was postponed to 2021, but in July of the same year, polio was detected in a water sample. Without resources for parallel crusades, the health government has prioritized polio. A national measles recovery crusade scheduled for October.
Measles causes a high fever, cough and a telltale rash. In pregnant women, the risk of miscarriage and premature birth increases. The virus killed about 2 million children each year before a vaccine was introduced in the 1960s.
In poor countries where young people have weakened immune systems due to malnutrition or other untreated infections, it can kill up to 10% of the other people it infects and is highly transmissible. A single patient with measles can spread the disease to 12 to 18 other people.
Over the years, the measles vaccine’s good fortune has numbed many of those risks, fitness experts say. their children. Measles cases had declined worldwide until 2016, when doubts about vaccines developed due to incorrect information and a growing lack of acceptance as truth by the government.
In 2019, global cases reached a 23-year high, killing 200,000 people, adding in countries where the disease had been eliminated in the past. The Democratic Republic of Congo was one of the worst-affected countries, with more than 6,000 deaths.
At the time, 86% of young people had at least the first dose of the international measles vaccine, according to WHO estimates. In 2021, when 25 million international youth did not receive their first dose, it reached 81%, the lowest number since 2008. In Africa, it is 68%.
The U. S. CDC is not allowed to do so. The U. S. government knows of 12 African countries that lack transparent plans or resources for their upcoming measles vaccination campaign. Chad, Mali and Liberia, where vaccination rates range from 55 percent to 70 percent, are at risk, he said.
Some of the world’s poorest countries want to seek help from foreign partners, most notably Gavi, the vaccine alliance. Gavi returned investment requests from 8 countries between September 2021 and March 2022, main points he said he wanted to make certain campaigns effective, his vaccine chief, Jalaa’ Abdelwahab told Reuters.
In particular, Gavi is calling for main points on how countries will succeed in so-called “zero-dose children,” those who have never won any kind of vaccine, as well as full budgets and main follow-up points, he added.
In Cameroon, delays in investments have delayed a measles prevention crusade for eight months, several specific vaccination crusades have been introduced in reaction to outbreaks, Gavi said. Cameroon’s fitness ministry did not respond to requests for comment.
In Liberia, where cases have increased tenfold from last year, the health government has tried to fund a crusade against measles and rubella. Gavi postponed the application because of gaps in epidemiological data, the West African country’s head of immunization, Adolphus Clarke, said.
Gavi said he is aware of the urgency and seeks to accelerate programs for campaigns, which can take more than a year to plan and pass.
It has already done so in Afghanistan, where cases are rising, Abdelwahab said. A follow-up crusade in Zimbabwe has also accelerated, and several crusades have been approved in other African countries in recent months, Gavi said. crusades in 23 countries until mid-2023.
Vaccination campaigns, crucially, also serve to educate communities about the risks of diseases such as measles. Health workers in schools, mosques and markets remind others of the importance of vaccination.
This reportedly helped Adama Komma, a 27-year-old mother of five who lives in a compound with six other families in the busy town of Bundung, about 10 miles west of Banjul, Gambia’s capital.
Two of his children, Aisha, 7, and Hassan, five, fell in January.
“They have red eyes. . . they scratch their bodies,” she said, sitting on the porch of her house as Aisha and Hassan clung to her side.
Symptoms worsened. They developed mouth sores that were so painful they couldn’t eat. He took them to a clinic where they were admitted and given medication.
Gradually, they recovered, but Komma hates to think about what could have been.
“I had never heard of measles, the first time I saw it,” he said. His voice weakened and his eyes widened. “I hadn’t heard of the measles vaccine. “
Reuter
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