District health officials have been alerted to conduct door-to-door visits to vulnerable children with symptoms of measles
Published Date – Fri, 25 Nov 22 at 07:15pm
Hyderabad: After outbreaks of measles in Maharashtra and other states, there has been no measles outbreak in Telangana even though the state health department has implemented a series of mission-mode measures to tackle the threat of the highly contagious disease.
All district health officials have been reminded to conduct door-to-door visits to vulnerable children with symptoms of measles and to receive measles-rubella vaccine (MRCV) wherever necessary, the senior official of the Health and Family Welfare Commissioner said.
Hyderabad has not seen a spike in measles cases in the past week or so, the top doctor said.
“Despite the entire health facility being on alert, we have not had a single measles patient in our fever clinic. Considering the outbreak of measles in other states, it is advisable for parents to get a second dose of measles vaccine,” advised Dr. K Shankar, director of the fever clinic.
Doctors familiar with measles outbreaks in other states say the outbreak may be linked to the Covid pandemic that has dominated the public health response around the world for more than two years. More recently, the World Health Organization (WHO) also said that measles vaccination rates have declined steadily since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
“In 2021, a record high of nearly 40 million children will miss measles vaccination, with 25 million missing the first dose and another 14.7 million missing the second dose,” said a joint WHO and US Centers report. Publications Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported.
The decline is a major setback to global progress in achieving and sustaining measles elimination, and leaves millions of children vulnerable to the infection, the report added.
