Somalia: Measles

This is not the lead from the story, rather a 'graph number eight: "On Sunday local aid workers held crisis meetings as anxiety rose over the unexplained killings of humanitarian staff and leaflets threatening them with death if they do not quit their jobs" [1].

Reported dead of measles: 18, under the age of five.

Location: Jowhar, about 50 miles north of Mogadishu.

UNICEF estimate of infant immunization: less than five percent of Somali children.

As noted elsewhere, Somalia would offer its fair share of humanitarian challenge were it one hundred percent free armed bands and armies; still, one may question the mentality behind discouraging the work of aid organizations.

In the search for the authentic in life, including the authentic in religion, the notion that God's will ought not be circumvented by man's has held sway in portions of several affiliations.  Buddhists may accept fate at face value; Christian Scientists may refuse medicines and related interventions in the path of illness: should Islamists, faithful in Allah's all-determining wisdom, not keep a handful or a hundred or thousands of infants from their divinely intended fate?  How dare Médecins Sans Frontières interfere!

Where Médecins Sans Frontières has had a fair hand, most recently in Nigeria, it has had this to say: "We are seeing a reduction in the number of case of measles precisely where we vaccinated at the beginning of the campaign. We started with the worst hit places and it's there that we are today observing the largest decreases" [2].

As a warrior's days drift into months and years, one may ask how one has served his god, country, and people.

Somali, look around: not even infants obtain consideration.

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1. Mohamed, Gula.  "Measles kills 18 children in Somalia."  Reuters AlertNet, July 14, 2008.

2. Médecins Sans Frontières.  "After measles vaccination campaign, epidemic decreases in Nigeria."  July 4, 2008.

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Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

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Comments

[James]

Thank you, Tammy.

Here are two quickly Googled references to smallpox eradication efforts with, and this from a quick glance, reference to an incident in Nigeria in 1966.

The World Health Organization Smallpox Eradication Programme: http://choo.fis.utoronto.ca/fis/courses/lis2102/KO.WHO.case.html

HISTORY OF SMALLPOX VACCINATION AND GLOBAL ERADICATION: http://www.clinmedres.org/cgi/content/full/1/2/87

Malicious propaganda involving western plots to create AIDS and spread it through innoculation programs has both a minimal and questionable presence in science literature on the web. In the absence of empirical methods of problem solving, research and study design, and otherwise discplined analytics, the potential for the development of conspiracy stories and the manipulation of those vulnerable and susceptible to them remains very good.

[tammy swofford]

This immediately brought to my mind the situation in Nigeria a few years ago where there was a sudden upswing in small pox cases, shortly after WHO had voiced optimism that the disease was near eradication. One very powerful Muslim cleric had a hand in swaying the population to deny their children the vaccines by stating that Western governments had contaminated the vaccines with HIV. The vast majority of these new cases were in the Kano area of Nigeria. The community regrouped to accept the immunizations after children started dying.

Tammy