Health Minister has asked medical clinics to work in the national holidays for fear the emergence of measles.
Minister Nguyen Thi Kim Tien also stressed the pivotal role of media in changing people’s thinking about vaccination and fighting the disease.
She advised everybody not to travel to crowded areas during the holidays to avoid risks of contracting measles.
Tran Dac Phu, head of the Health Ministry’s Preventive Health Department, said that despite the decreasing number of measles people in end of April compared to previous period, severe patients taken to hospitals are not falling.
Currently, the National Children Hospital are treating over 240 patients contracting measles while Bach Mai hospital receive 65 patients and the Tropical Disease Hospital admits more than 85 cases of measles infections.
At a press conference, Dr. Kohei Toda, an expert from the World Health Organization’s Expanded Program on Immunization, has said that the organization is paying heed to the current measles epidemic in Vietnam.
Measles is spreading in Vietnam mainly among the group of children who have not been vaccinated properly and among children under the age of vaccination, he said.
Measles is a highly contagious disease that is likely to spread rapidly among those who have been unvaccinated; accordingly to prevent the spread of measles, he said, it is necessary to have at least 95 percent of children immunized with two courses of measles vaccines.
Dr. Kohei Toda stressed that a large quantity of people at the National Children Hospital in Hanoi succumbed to the disease for contracting measles.
The WHO expert also noted that the current measles epidemic in Vietnam is quite serious; accordingly, the organization is considering the unpredictable development of the disease in the country. Its study shows that severe measles infections occur in children under five years of age without proper immunization who have weak resistance to the disease.
Dr. Kohei Toda advised parents to take their children to clinics for vaccine shoots soon.
