Pakistan Child Measles Deaths Surge in 2012

Measles cases surged in Pakistan last year with hundreds of children dying of the disease, an international health body said Tuesday, as health officials said they had launched a new vaccination campaign in the affected areas to immunize hundreds of thousands of others.

Pakistan struggles with a beleaguered health care system, unsanitary conditions in many parts of the country and a lack of education about how to prevent disease. All those factors make it difficult to combat infectious diseases such as measles and polio.

A spokeswoman for the World Health Organization, Maryam Yunus, said that 306 children died in Pakistan of measles in 2012, compared to 64 the year before.

She said the jump was most pronounced in southern Sindh province, where measles killed 210 children in 2012. She said only 28 children died there in 2011.

The World Health Organization did not give a reason for the increase in deaths, but a provincialhealth official in Sindh said that the disease hit areas where poor families did not vaccinate their children.

Provincial health minister Saghir Ahmed said 100 children died in Sindh province in December alone, mostly in areas where many people were not vaccinated.

He said health officials recently launched a campaign to vaccinate 2.9 million children in the affected areas of the province and urged parents to get their children vaccinated.

Many Pakistanis, especially in rural areas, view vaccinations campaigns with suspicion as a western plot to sterilize Muslims. In December, nine health officials working to immunize Pakistanis against polio were killed by militants opposed to the campaign. Pakistan is one of three countries in the world where polio is endemic.

Sindh province, the hardest hit area by the measles outbreak, has also been battered by repeated floods in recent years that have damaged hospitals and clinics.

Measles is an extremely infectious disease spread by coughing and sneezing, or personal contact. It causes a fever, cough and a rash all over the body. Most people who contract the disease recover but it can be deadly for malnourished children who have not been vaccinated.

Complications from the disease can include blindness, an infection that causes brain swelling, dehydration and diarrhea, and pneumonia. According to WHO, 139,300 people died of measles worldwide in 2010.