Two cases of measles confirmed

Two cases of measles confirmed

Associated Press, Banda Aceh

Health workers on tsunami-hit Sumatra island have started have started vaccinating more than 1,000 people to head off the spread of the measles, after two unconnected cases of the virus were discovered.

The cases occurred in separate villages outside the province capital Banda Aceh, the area hit hardest by the Dec. 26 earthquake and tsunami, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), which considers just one case of measles an outbreak because it is so contagious.

"Two cases have been reported in two separate villages," Moira Connolly, who tracks outbreaks for WHO, said Monday.

The U.N. children's agency, UNICEF, already was in the midst of a campaign to vaccinate 600,000 people in devastated Sumatra against the disease when the cases occurred, and it immediately inoculated a ring of 1,200 people living around the villages where each case was confirmed.

Measles is one of the most contagious viruses. In the developing world, it kills between 3 percent and 5 percent of children who contract it.

Malnutrition in refugee camps has been known to push the death rate as high as 30 percent, Connolly said. But malnutrition is not considered an issue yet among tsunami survivors.

WHO recommends immunizing more than 90 percent of children to protect the population from outbreaks.

In Aceh, only about 25 percent of the children were vaccinated before the earthquake, said Dr. Georg Petersen, WHO's representative in Indonesia. As aid agencies flooded into the province in the wake of the tsunami, mass measles vaccination was a high priority from the beginning.

Overcrowded refugee camps provide opportunities for the virus to spread out of control.