SAMOA, Dec 5 (NNN-AGENCIES) – Samoa began a two-day shutdown today (Thursday), as authorities embarked on an unprecedented mass vaccination campaign, to contain a deadly outbreak of measles that has killed 62 people, mostly small children, in the Pacific island nation.
Officials suspended non-essential government services, to allow civil servants to support the vaccination drive, and ordered all businesses to close. Inter-island ferry services were also cancelled.
Residents were advised to stay indoors and display a red flag, if they were not yet immunised, as vaccination teams went to work across the nation of 200,000.
“No one is permitted to drive, unless they are going to hospital or they have special permission.
“The ban is to make it as simple as possible for the medical teams to travel throughout Samoa and access as many families as possible.”
The operation, carried out under emergency powers, as the epidemic took hold last month, is a desperate bid to halt the spread of the highly-infectious disease.
On Thursday (today), the government said, 165 cases had been reported in the last 24 hours, as the death toll rose to 62. Of the dead, 54 were babies and young children aged four and under.
“I’ve seen mass mobilisation campaigns before, but not over an entire country like this,” UNICEF’s Pacific Island chief, Sheldon Yett, said.
“That’s what we’re doing right now. This entire country is being vaccinated.”– NNN-AGENCIES