Measles has killed 2,758 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo since January, more than the Ebola epidemic in a year. The medical NGO Doctors Without Borders said this on Saturday, 17th August 2019. It then called for a “massive mobilisation of funds.”
The disease is preventable with a vaccine. However, it has infected over 145,000 people in the DRC between January and early August.
“Since July, the epidemic worsened, with a rise in new cases reported in several provinces,” said the NGO. The NGO goes by its French acronym, MSF.
“Only $2.5 million has been raised out of the $8.9 million required for the Health Cluster response plan. [This is in] stark contrast with the Ebola epidemic in the east of the country, which attracts multiple organisations and hundreds of millions of dollars in funding,” it added.
MSF tweeted that without a “massive mobilisation of funds and response organisations, the current measles outbreak in #DRCongo could get even worse.”
The NGO said it vaccinated 474,860 children between the ages of six months and five years since the beginning of the year. It has also provided care to more than 27,000 measles patients.
In the country’s east, Ebola claimed more than 1,900 lives since erupting last August, less than measles.
Measles is a highly contagious disease. It is caused by a virus that attacks mainly children. The most serious complications include blindness, brain swelling, diarrhoea and severe respiratory infections.
Last year, cases more than doubled to almost 350,000 from 2017, according to the World Health Organization. This was amid a rise in “anti-vaxxer” sentiment in some countries that can afford the vaccine. It was also a result of lagging resources for the preventative measure in poor nations.
The DRC declared a measles epidemic in June.