In the Republic of congo, medical centers all around the state are rushing to vaccinate all people against measles. Since January of last year measles has been a big problem in the Democratic Republic of Congo, already claiming over 4,000 lives. This nearly doubles the number dead from the ebola outbreak a few years ago. This is the most active in children under 5 years, where 74% will get measles and at the current rate 90% with measles die.
Hospitals and medical specialists have been working on combating this on to fronts, one to stop the spread of the illness and the other to prevent those who have it from death. Even after a year of this epidemic happening they are starting to really making head way vaccinating citizens to protect them from the vicious illness. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is the biggest contributor to the prevention of this problem. As of now they are flying in over 1,111 med kits to medical centers and hot spots across the state. These medkits contain vaccinations, medicine and rehabilitation equipment to help stop this problem quickly. Just over year 8.6 million measles vaccines have been given out by the UNICEF. The biggest problem explained by the UNICEF is that the majority of the congolese aren’t vaccinated and really aren’t looking to be until it’s too late.
This coming october the Government plans to create a vaccination campaign where they sweep across the country, vaccinating all children 6 months to 5 years old. This campaign is going to be funded and supplied by UNICEF to ensure that no more lives will be claimed by this disease. Personally I question why it took so long form them to begin to act on this. It has almost been a year since the outbreak and things haven’t got much better. I also don’t understand how unequipped the government was to tackle this problem. In my opinion too many lives were claimed by this disease and its was unnecessary, when immediate action could have taken place when the problem arose.