LARKANA: Measles cases continued to pour in at the children hospital attached with Chandka Medical College Hospital (CMCH), said paediatrics department chairman Prof Dr Arbab Ali Junejo on Wednesday.

The disease had attained the level of epidemic, he said while talking to Dawn and suggested to launching a mass vaccination drive in the province to protect children.

He said that last Friday, the hospital in its emergency unit had received a lot of cases and majority of them were found unvaccinated. It was a highly communicable disease which badly required special campaigns to at least cover the infected areas, Dr Junejo said.

On Wednesday, Expanded Programme Immunisation (EPI) Sindh Project Director Dr Jumman Bahooto visited the unit of the professor to keep himself abreast about the situation. Prof Dr Junejo discussed with him the gravity of the situation and the possible measures to address the issue.

During the visit of different wards of the CMCH Children Hospital on Wednesday, this reporter saw three patients hailing from Nasirabad, Larkana and Garhi Yaseen under treatment in the Unit-III and all were unvaccinated.

In April, 19 patients were admitted and two of them died due to complications, sources said. In Unit-I on Wednesday, five patients of measles were admitted and they were also unvaccinated, the doctor on duty said. They were the residents of Jhat Pat (Balochistan), Gaibidero, Qambar and Shahdadkot.

Prof Dr Shanti and other doctors working in the children hospital said that recently people from surveillance side of health visited the hospital on April 30 in the wake of reports of measles breakout.

They talked about setting up vaccination desk in the hospital to provide vaccination to children against the illness, they said. Four new cases were seen admitted in the emergency unit being looked after by Child Life Foundation (CLF) on Wednesday. They were both vaccinated and unvaccinated, they said.

Sources at the CLF told this reporter that from December 2020 to April 25, 2021, some 219 cases of measles were admitted in the health facility. They and others working in different units of the children hospital said that now they were receiving cases of chicken pox and Hepatitis-A along with those of measles The children with chicken pox were advised to go home, the sources said.

The sources privy to CMCH’s children hospital management said that in April alone, 69 patients suffering from measles were admitted in the hospital. The breakup was 27, 25 and 17 were admitted in Unit-I, II and III respectively while the number of deaths was six, they said.

A couple of years ago, “we had encountered the same situation”, prompting the health managers then to launch a mass vaccination drive,” said Prof Junejo.

Published in Dawn, May 6th, 2021