SALON

Tuesday, Jan 1, 2013 2:16 PM UTC

Pakistan child measles deaths surge in 2012

By , Associated Press

Topics: From the Wires,

Pakistan child measles deaths surge in 2012A Pakistani mother attends to her child suffering from measles, at a local hospital in Sukkar, Pakistan, Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013. Measles cases surged in Pakistan in 2012 with hundreds of children dying of the disease, the World Health Organization said Tuesday. Pakistani officials in recent days say they have launched an immunization campaign to reach children in the worst-hit areas. (AP Photo/Fareed Khan)(Credit: AP)

KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) — Measles cases surged in Pakistan in 2012, and hundreds of children died from the disease, an international health body said Tuesday.

In recent days Pakistani officials said they launched an immunization campaign to reach children in the worst-hit areas. But the country still struggles with a beleaguered health care system, unsanitary conditions in many regions and a lack of education about how to prevent disease. All those factors make it difficult to combat infectious diseases such as measles and polio.

Also, many oppose vaccinations, suspecting they are meant to harm their people.

A spokeswoman for the World Health Organization, Maryam Yunus, said that 306 children died in Pakistan of measles in 2012, compared to 64 the year before.

She said the jump was most pronounced in southern Sindh province, where measles killed 210 children in 2012. She said 28 children died there in 2011.

The World Health Organization did not give a reason for the increase in deaths, but a provincial health official in Sindh said that the disease hit areas where poor families did not vaccinate their children.

Provincial health minister Saghir Ahmed said 100 children died in Sindh province in December alone, mostly in areas where many people were not vaccinated.

He said health officials recently launched a campaign to vaccinate 2.9 million children in the affected areas of the province and urged parents to get their children vaccinated.

Many Pakistanis, especially in rural areas, view vaccinations campaigns with suspicion as a Western plot to sterilize Muslims. In December, nine health officials working to immunize Pakistanis against polio were killed by militants opposed to the campaign. Pakistan is one of three countries in the world where polio is endemic.

Sindh province, the area hardest hit by the measles outbreak, has also been battered by repeated floods in recent years that have damaged hospitals and clinics.

Measles is an extremely infectious disease spread by coughing and sneezing or personal contact. It causes a fever, cough and a rash all over the body. Most people who contract the disease recover, but it can be fatal for malnourished children.

Complications from the disease can include blindness, an infection that causes brain swelling, dehydration and diarrhea, and pneumonia.

According to WHO, 139,300 people died of measles worldwide in 2010.

Continue Reading Close

More By Adil Jawad.

Next Article

Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

What To Read Awards: Top 10 Books of 2012 slide show

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 10
  • 10. "The Guardians" by Sarah Manguso: "Though Sarah Manguso’s 'The Guardians' is specifically about losing a dear friend to suicide, she pries open her intelligent heart to describe our strange, sad modern lives. I think about the small resonating moments of Manguso’s narrative every day." -- M. Rebekah Otto, The Rumpus

  • 9. "Beautiful Ruins" by Jess Walter: "'Beautiful Ruins' leads my list because it's set on the coast of Italy in 1962 and Richard Burton makes an entirely convincing cameo appearance. What more could you want?" -- Maureen Corrigan, NPR's "Fresh Air"

  • 8. "Arcadia" by Lauren Groff: "'Arcadia' captures our painful nostalgia for an idyllic past we never really had." -- Ron Charles, Washington Post

  • 7. "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn: "When a young wife disappears on the morning of her fifth wedding anniversary, her husband becomes the automatic suspect in this compulsively readable thriller, which is as rich with sardonic humor and social satire as it is unexpected plot twists." -- Marjorie Kehe, Christian Science Monitor

  • 6. "How Should a Person Be" by Sheila Heti: "There was a reason this book was so talked about, and it’s because Heti has tapped into something great." -- Jason Diamond, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

  • 4. TIE "NW" by Zadie Smith and "Far From the Tree" by Andrew Solomon: "Zadie Smith’s 'NW' is going to enter the canon for the sheer audacity of the book’s project." -- Roxane Gay, New York Times "'Far From the Tree' by Andrew Solomon is, to my mind, a life-changing book, one that's capable of overturning long-standing ideas of identity, family and love." -- Laura Miller, Salon

  • 3. "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" by Ben Fountain: "'Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk' says a lot about where we are today," says Marjorie Kehe of the Christian Science Monitor. "Pretty much the whole point of that novel," adds Time's Lev Grossman.

  • 2. "Bring Up the Bodies" by Hilary Mantel: "Even more accomplished than the preceding novel in this sequence, 'Wolf Hall,' Mantel's new installment in the fictionalized life of Thomas Cromwell -- master secretary and chief fixer to Henry VIII -- is a high-wire act, a feat of novelistic derring-do." -- Laura Miller, Salon

  • 1. "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" by Katherine Boo: "Like the most remarkable literary nonfiction, it reads with the bite of a novel and opens up a corner of the world that most of us know absolutely nothing about. It stuck with me all year." -- Eric Banks, president of the National Book Critics Circle

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 10

Related Videos

More Related Stories

Comments

 8 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username ( profile | log out )

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

From Around the Web

Recommendations