Vaccinations must take place safely and effectively, particularly in remote disadvantaged areas where vaccination coverage remained modest, Deputy Health Minister Do Xuan Tuyen said on September 21.
Over the past six months, there have been more than 5,600 cases of suspected positive measles typhus, including 1,266 cases positive to measles with zero death reported.
Hanoi recorded 1,193 cases of measles since the beginning of this year, however, there has been no death from this disease, according to the city's health authorities.
As many as 2,000 cases of measles, including two deaths, have been recorded nationwide so far this year, according to the Preventive Medicine Department under the Ministry of Health.
Ho Chi Minh City recorded 3,316 scarlet fever cases suspected of infecting measles in the first three months of 2019, according to the city’s Preventive Medicine Centre.
Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam urged medical facilities nationwide to step up preventive health care services and ensure adequate vaccines to prevent the spread of epidemics such as measles and dengue fever.
According to the cycle of measles outbreaks, after 4-5 years, measles will recur on a large scale. Especially, in 2018, the number of measles cases has increased more than in 2017.
Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Kim Tien on March 9 inspected the prevention of measles in Ho Chi Minh City as there has been an unusually high number of cases recorded in the southern city since the end of 2018.
New cases of communicable diseases in Ho Chi Minh City have gradually declined, but the figure stayed at a high level, said the municipal Preventive Medicine Centre.
Nearly 90 percent of measles cases reported in Vietnam can be traced to people who were either not vaccinated against the highly contagious virus, received no full vaccinations or had unknown vaccination status.
More Philippine children are contracting measles, while the disease has yet to be put under control, according to the country’s Department of Health (DOH).
The number of dengue fever cases in Ho Chi Minh City in the first seven weeks of 2019 surged by nearly 250 percent over the same period last year, reported the city’s Preventive Medicine Centre.
Measles has been reported in 43 out of 64 provinces and cities nationwide with 664 patients since early this month, particularly in the south, according to the Ministry of Health.
Health experts are advising people to take precautions to prevent epidemics and diseases that frequently occur in the first three months of the year during the humid weather and crowded festivals, said Tran Dac Phu, head of the Ministry of Health’s Department of Preventive Medicine.
The Philippine Department of Health has noted a sharp rise of measles cases in Manila, prompting health authorities to declare on February 6 measles outbreak in the Philippine capital.
Thirty-two cases of measles were recorded in Hanoi in the first three weeks of 2019, mostly children who are under five years old and have not been fully vaccinated.
Parents have delayed taking their nine-month-old children to healthcare facilities for measles vaccinations because of insufficient counselling from hospitals and doctors at vaccination centres.
Nearly 448,000 children aging from 6-36 months will receive vitamin A in a large dose from November 30 to December 3, according to the Hanoi Centre for Disease Control.
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