The national measles campaign targets close to 1 million children in Lebanon
The Ministry of Public Health, WHO and UNICEF are multiplying their efforts to reach every child with safe vaccination and address the spread of measles through this immunization campaign
Children in Lebanon are being protected from measles and polio through a national immunization campaign which began during December 2019. The Ministry of Public Health, in partnership World Health Organization (WHO), launched the first phase of a national measles immunization campaign, starting with Akkar, North and Baalbeck-Hermel governorates from the 7th of December till 22nd of December.
To reach every child, UNICEF, together with governments and WHO, tailors immunization services to the specific needs of communities and tries to remove obstacles that prevent children from receiving life-saving vaccines. In 2018, the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health, in partnership with UNICEF, immunized more than 0.5 million children under the age of 15 against measles. Given the continued spread of measles virus, the partners have decided to launch a national measles immunization campaign to cover almost 1 million children.
UNICEF’s Health and Nutrition Officer, Sabeen Abdulsater stresses on the importance of maximising the uptake of Polio, Measles and MMR vaccines during the first phase of the campaign. “The important approach of this campaign, is targeting children through different gateways, such as at schools, public health care centers, dispensaries, nurseries, orphanages; additionally, for those children who are hard to reach, we have mobile vaccination units that play a key role. Combining the experiences of UNICEF with that of WHO and the Ministry of Public Health’s extensive network of health centers, plus the Ministry of Education granting access to schools, means we are able to reach a large number of children very quickly”.
As for the ministry’s of Public Health Primary Health Care Coordinator at North of Lebanon, Rana, it is a question of awareness and education. “Prior to launching this new campaign, there was high awareness on the return of measles to this area in Lebanon”, she reports, adding, “however, there remains a gap within some parts of the community regarding knowing the importance and following-up on their children’s routine immunization. To counter this, we have mobilized in this campaign 54 vaccination teams, who are working six-days-a-week throughout the North governorate, reaching all cities, towns, and going to remote areas to vaccinate hard to reach children”.
In recent years, vaccination dropouts have occurred because measles has been perceived by society as eradicated or because of the global ‘antivaccination movement’; so, parents no longer see their children as being at risk of the virus or perceive the importance of the vaccines. However, the simple truth is that, vaccines against measles, are safe and very effective in preventing measles and jeopardizing our children’s lives.
Tripoli school nurse, Madam Ghazali, was on hand during the visit of the one of the ministry’s active vaccination teams to her school. “ a while ago, we began to hear of measles cases reported in the towns surrounding our city – parents talk, and everyone was concerned about their child”, she recounts.
“Everyone remembers the threat of the return of polio earlier this decade, and no one wants to see measles gain a foothold in Lebanon again”, she says.
Following contact from the Ministry of Public Health, and with 600 pupils - at her school, every parent was made aware of the developing situation and offered a ministry-administered vaccination – that is free of charge and, meeting WHO’s global standards, of high quality .
“Worryingly”, states the nurse, “not every parent accepted to vaccinate their children durinf the campaign. Initially we had 150 refusals”. After follow-up calls to parents she was able to reduce this number to under one-hundred, citing parents’ approval of the ministry’s partnership with UNICEF and WHO as one reason - and those who continued to refuse did so because, their child was already safely vaccinated through routine immunizations. “I see their vaccinations cards, and they are correct – but they should know that a second shot would in fact boost their child’s immunity. It is not always easy to get this message across,” she laments.
The school opened its doors to three of Rana’s vaccination teams – each team is composed of three: a nurse, a vaccine and cold-chain handler, and an administrator. With each team vaccinating over 100 children in one day, they play a key role in stopping the measles outbreak and increasing community immunity against Polio virus as well.
For Nurse Hannah, the head nurse at the overcrowded Mina Public Health Care Center, MoPH’s campaign with UNICEF and WHO could not have been better timed. “We saw measles cases increasing, but with our clinic’s catchment area comprising mostly of low-income families, there was a reluctance amongst them to vaccinate their children. This collaboration between the ministry, UNICEF and the WHO has delivered a high-profile message that is spreading across our community – measles is a real risk, but there’s an easy, free of chargeway to protect your child and that is by vaccinating them during the campaign!”
Parents at the public health care center agreed, with insistence from grandmother Khadeeja, that without the provision of free routine vaccines and the convenience of administering it during her granddaughter’s regular paediatric check-up today, it would have been unlikely that she would have known about the risk of measles virus, nor actively pursued immunization.
MoPH’s latest measles immunization campaign in partnership with the UNICEF and the World Health Organization is aimed at ensuring that all children in Lebanon from 6 months to under 10 years of age are fully protected from measles and polio diseases and that the measles outbreak in Lebanon is brought to a halt.