This while almost a quarter of a million people have been infected by the disease after a major outbreak of the disease spread to all of the country’s provinces, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) which stated that this is the world’s largest and fastest-moving epidemic.

Measles in the DRC has now killed more than twice the number which has died of Ebola there in the last 15 months, the BBC reported.

Despite Kinshasa and the WHO launching an emergency vaccination programme in September that aimed to inoculate more than 800,000 children, the outbreak continues to menace the country.

The spread has been exacerbated by poor infrastructure, attacks on health centres, and a lack of access to routine healthcare.

Babies constitute the majority of those infected and although four million children have been vaccinated, experts warn that this amounts to less than half of the total in the country while simultaneously there is a shortage of vaccines.

African News Agency (ANA)