By Patience Lunda:
Four hundred and eight measles cases have been recorded from January to December this year, albeit with no deaths, the Presidential Taskforce on Public Health Emergencies said Monday.
It indicates that such cases have been reported sporadically from nine districts of Lilongwe, Ntcheu, Rumphi, Machinga, Mangochi, Balaka, Blantyre, Nkhotakota and Salima.
According to the World Health Organisation, Malawi reported 173 measles cases from 2000 to 2023, which means the cases have gone up by 136.7 percent within a year.
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Taskforce’s co-chairperson Wilfred Chalamira Nkhoma said there had been measles vaccination in affected areas, case management, contact tracing and community engagement.
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“The measures we have taken have been used to bring the outbreak under control because measles is a preventable disease,” he said.
Lilongwe topped the list, with 198 cases, followed by Rumphi at 107.
Ntcheu registered 41 cases, Mangochi 29, Blantyre 13, Salima six, with Machinga and Balaka recording five cases each.
Nkhotakota recorded four cases.
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Commenting on this, epidemiologist Adamson Muula said the outbreak of measles signified that the country had not done well in vaccinating children against measles.
Muula urged the Ministry of Health to check the vaccination record of the cases.
“Sometimes there are some people who do not believe in vaccination and these people pose a danger not only to themselves and families but also to communities they live in.
“There is a need for the ministry and its partners to look deeper into the issue and see if children who are having measles are all unvaccinated to know what is causing the outbreak,” he said.
Similarly, health rights advocate Maziko Matemba said the figures were alarming and urged the ministry and the taskforce to encourage vaccination.
In November last year, the Ministry of Health declared a measles outbreak in Lilongwe after recording nine cases.
Measles is a disease caused by a virus and affects mostly children who are not vaccinated.
A recent report by WHO revealed that measles vaccination averted more than 60 million deaths between 2000 and 2023 globally.
In 2023, there were an estimated 107,500 measles deaths globally, mostly among unvaccinated or under-vaccinated children under the age of 5 years.
