Central SA
Measles campaign launched in Northern Cape schools─── BAMBATHA GIKO 13:26 Tue, 07 Feb 2023
Measles vaccinations were rolled out in Northern Cape schools to curb the outbreak in the province. This comes after an increase in the number of lab-confirmed cases across the country.
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The campaign officially launched on Monday 6 February 2023 at the Roodepan Primary School in Kimberley. NC Health MEC, Maruping Lekwene, and Education MEC, Zolile Monakali, visited the St Peters Primary School to monitor the roll-out of the measles vaccinations, vitamin A and deworming programmes.
“Our target for the measles vaccinations is 383 000," said Lekwene. "Our approach is to target all the schools, to target learners from Grade R to 15 years, generally starting from 6 months to 15 years,” he added.
Seven cases have been confirmed in the province – four from the Frances Baard District (Kimberley), two in ZF Mgcawu, Upington, and one in Pixley Ka Seme, De Aar. However, no fatality has been reported as of yet.
The Department of Health, together with the Department of Education, also focused on the administration of catch-up doses for children who missed their routine doses of vitamin A and deworming during their immunisation programme.
The departments say they have a capacity of 36 professional nurses and six data capturers to manage the vaccination of the learners. There are enough vaccines and they are kept according to the specifications of the World Health Organisation standards.
Meanwhile, the Free State launched their measles awareness campaign on Tuesday 7 February 2023. The Free State Department of Health's spokesperson, Mondli Mvambi, said the District Disease Outbreak Response team is doing contact tracing and screening of affected children to monitor the outbreak in the affected towns of the Free State.
ALSO Read: Measles Awareness Campaign started in Free State
Currently, 459 positive cases have been confirmed across the country. 39% of measle cases were of the age group 5- 9 years, with the highest proportion of cases in hospitals being 54% in the under-1 age group. This is according to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD).
The NICD noted despite making up 17% of the cases, there has been a significant increase in the number of infections in the 10-14 year age group, which justifies the need for a vaccination campaign.
