Measles campaign goes ahead in storm-hit Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, July 2 (Reuters) Pakistani health authorities launched a campaign today in storm-hit Baluchistan province to vaccinate 1.5 million children against measles, but the drive has been postponed in some districts because of flooding.

The campaign is part of a nationwide drive begun in March to immunise more than 63 million children in the South Asian country where an estimated 21,000 children die from measles and its complications every year, officials said.

''We have launched the campaign in six of the targeted eight districts,'' said provincial health official Dawood Kasi.

Last week a cyclone hit Baluchistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, killing at least 110 people.

Floods have swept away villages, roads and bridges and knocked down power lines. Up to 2 million people have been affected and 250,000 people are homeless.

But Kasi said nearly 3,000 health workers in about 600 vaccination teams were heading out in an effort to stamp out the highly contagious measles virus.

The health teams would work with disaster management teams to reach the maximum number of mothers and tell them about the importance of measles vaccination, he said.

People in remote parts of Baluchistan and North West Frontier Province have been refusing to have their children vaccinated against polio because of rumours, sometimes spread by conservative clerics, that vaccination was aimed at sterilisation.

But the measles campaign coordinator, Muneer Kasi, said public information campaigns had been held in the run-up to the drive and he was not expecting any opposition.

The first phase of the measles vaccination campaign took place in various areas in March.

By next March it is hoped all of the targeted 63 million children will have been protected from one of the main causes of vaccine-preventable death among children.

REUTERS RN BD1612