Congo (DRC) declared the end of the two-year outbreak of measles that claimed the lives of more than 7,000 children aged under five.
The outbreak was countered by vaccination on a massive scale, in which millions of children and infants were immunised.
"For the past month, we are able to say that this epidemic has been eliminated from across our territory," Health Minister Eteni Longondo told a press conference.
The first cases of measles in the latest outbreak were recorded in June 2018. As of January this year, the WHO had recorded more than 335,000 suspected cases of the disease, of which 6,362 were fatal. By way of comparison, the DRC -- a vast country the size of continental western Europe -- has recorded 9,891 cases of coronavirus, of which 251 were fatal.
"We can say that measles [in the DRC] no longer exists."
No comments:
Post a Comment