Measles Vaccination Campaign Exceeds Targets

29 June 2011

Maputo — The Mozambican Health Ministry has claimed success in the national vaccination campaign against measles held in the last week of May.

The Ministry had hoped to reach 3.6 million children between one and five years of age in the campaign, which also included administering vitamin A supplements and deworming using the drug Mebendazole.

But the Deputy National Director of Public Health, Leonardo Chavane, told a Maputo press conference on Wednesday that in fact the campaign had covered 3,974,977 children – which was over ten per cent more than planned.

According to Chavane, even the northern province of Nampula, which started the vaccinations a week later than the rest of the country, exceeded its targets.

“Nampula had better results than in previous years”, he said. “We decided to postpone the start of the campaign in order to organise ourselves better, and instead of the 742,888 children envisaged, 800,612 were vaccinated”.

There had been a few cases of resistance to vaccination, notably in Manica province where the followers of the Johan Marangue church refused to allow their children to be vaccinated. This fundamentalist sect believes that vaccination is against the will of god.

“There has been ever greater participation in vaccination campaigns”, said Chavane. “The communities now accept vaccination as a priority question. We did not have any significant cases of resistance, except in the Johan Marangue community which prevented their believers from taking part”.

“We are working to have more people vaccinated, particularly in Manica, where there is still some resistance for religious reasons”, he added.

Health Minister Alexandre Manguele praised the commitment of health workers, which ensured good results from the campaign, as well as that of the government’s partners who provided financial and logistical support.

Manguele said that 1,900 health brigades were mobilised across the country, each consisting of five or six members. Thus about 10,000 health professionals had been involved in the campaign.

The campaign, which cost about five million US dollars, was supported by the Canadian government and by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) who both declared their willingness to continue such support.

AllAfrica – All the Time