Accra, Aug. 1, GNA - Dr Nana Kwadwo Owusu-Agyei, Programme Manager of the Expanded Immunisation Programme of the Ministry of Health, on Tuesday said for the past two years no child died of measles. The disease, however, remained the leading cause of illness among the Vaccine preventable diseases for children under five years. He said there had been a dramatic fall from 13,476 suspected cases in 2001 to 487 cases in 2005 after a large outbreak in 1995, which involved about 44,000 cases and 85 deaths.

Speaking at the Ghana Health Service's Monthly Health Promotion Talk, under the theme "Measles in Ghana", Dr Antwi-Agyei said measles was in the early 1980s ranked second to malaria in terms of burden of diseases.

He explained that measures were put in place to control the outbreak, which involved intermittent vaccination and said measles vaccination had since been incorporated into routine immunisation of children at nine months of age.

Dr Owusu-Agyei noted that measles was highly contagious and it was caused by a virus and its control required very high population immunity and that existing vaccines were safe and highly effective. He explained that the indicators used in achieving the fourth target of the Millennium Development Goals were to reduce death of children less than one year old from measles.

This he explained could be done if districts attained more than 90 per cent coverage consistently.

He described measles as a killer disease, which when complicated, caused blindness; diarrhoea; sore in the mouth and pneumonia and affected the brain enteritis and urged mothers to ensure that their children took the first dose at the age of nine months and the second dose during the campaign exercise which would come off in November 2006. Dr Owusu-Agyei mentioned symptoms of measles as fever; cough; rashes and redness of the eyes and urged mothers to look out for these signs and to report immediately to the nearest clinic.

"Measles campaign will be held from November 1 to November 5, 2006 and our target population would be from nine to 59 months. Polio and Vitamin A Supplements would also be given on the same day," he said. 1 Aug.06