Four deaths in Measles outbreak in Bakool region’s Elbarde district

Tuesday April 23, 2019

Four people have died in the past three weeks in a measles outbreak in southern Somalia’s Bakool region, in an area close to the Ethiopian border.

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According to Dr Asar Adan Mohamed, who operates one of two maternal and child health services (MCH) clinics in Elbarde town, close to the border with Ethiopia, dozens of families have been affected by the measles outbreak since the beginning of April.

“The last death of a four year old boy occurred on 11th of this month. Three others, including a young girl and two adults, have also died,” he said: “I saw one case where the disease had infected a whole family of seven. Currently there are 30 people including children infected and about 200 people have recovered from the disease.”

Mohamed Saed Ali, the coordinator of the health ministry of South West state, attributed the outbreak of measles to an influx of families crossing the border from southern Ethiopia’s Somali region: “People whose livestock were killed by the drought have arrived in the town, some of them are suspected to be the carriers of the disease. Many of them have not been vaccinated,” the coordinator said.

He said the last vaccination campaign in Elbarde town was conducted by the ministry supported by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2018, but it did not cover the whole district: “Some people remained unvaccinated and those are the pastoralists who move around with their livestock,” he explained.
Jama Ali Muse, a father of seven, told Radio Ergo that three of his children, two girls and a boy, had measles. He had been living with his family in Ethiopia, where he took his herd of 90 animals to find pasture and water, but drought that hit parts of Ethiopia forced them to return to Somalia.

“We knew nothing about measles and we had not been vaccinated. The children are suffering from the disease. I have no idea how to treat these children,” Jama told Radio Ergo. Anab Liban Mohamed’s one-year old daughter, who had not yet been vaccinated, is sick with measles. Her five older children were all vaccinated during the last campaign in Elbarde.

Dr Asar said both MCHs in town had closed down for five months after running short of medicines and supplies. They resumed partial operation last week after officials from the health ministry visited the town and delivered a few boxes of medicine, according to Radio Ergo’s local correspondent who accompanied the delegation.

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