Eastern Equatoria State is alarmed by the outbreak of measles that has affected 1,000 children in Kapoeta East County.
According to the officials, the most affected areas are Nanyangachor and Kuron in Kauto Payam.
Speaking to The City Review in an interview on Wednesday, the director-general in the state ministry of health, Dr Etin Errid, said a medical team has been deployed in the areas to assess the situation.
There are actually 1000, according to the report from the WHO. We have sent a team, and the team is headed by the minister of health,” he said.
Errid appealed to the residents in the state to always be prepared and to make sure all children get vaccinated to avoid the further spread of the disease.
“My message is that there is only one way to prevent this vaccination: take your children to the vaccination centre and let them be vaccinated.”
When contacted, Thomas Piya, Eastern Equatoria State, minister of health described the measles outbreak in Kapoeta East County as alarming and severe.
“The outbreak of the measles in Kapoeta East is true. Last month, we sent a team for assessment in the two facilities of Nanyanchor and Kuron and the samples were taken and sent to Juba for lab analysis. So, we received the report early this month, and the reports were confirmed out of the 12, 10 were positive and 2 were negative based on the data analysis that revealed that about 800-1000 cases were reported in the two health facilities.”
Piya said teams from the Ministry of Health and the World Health Organisation are on the ground to conduct a mobile vaccination in the entire Kapoeta East County.
“The entire Kapoeta East needs to be re-vaccinated because we tried to analyse the report of the previous immunisation and we found out that some areas could not be accessed due to poor road infrastructure in May.”
“There was a lot of rain, and some drugs did not reach some of these areas,” the minister stated.
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