Fred Ouma Solomon Muyita
23 February 2004
Kampala — THE measles wards in Mulago Hospital are empty. The wards, which used to be congested now hardly receive any patient, writes Fred Ouma Solomon Muyita.
Florence Waiswa, senior public nurse with Community Health department, Mulago Hospital, said in a recent exhibition that the daily measles admissions used to range from five to 10 patients.
"The big numbers we used to admit, with some patients sleeping on the floor and pathways between beds is now history after mass measles campaigns," says Waiswa. "After some time, we hope to embark on the eradication phase to disable it like we have done with polio. Our aim is to achieve a free-measles society by 2015."
Dr. Issa Makumbi, the assistant commissioner for health services (immunisation) at the Ministry of Health, says this is evidence that immunisation works.
"The wards with a capacity of about 70 patients, used to get over 30 patients before immunisation, but are now empty. This is good because we have reduced deaths and ill-health among the population. Measles is one of the great killers," Makumbi says. He adds that he is yet to establish the situation in the other main hospitals.
This development comes hardly a fortnight after the Global Alliance for Vaccines & Immunization (GAVI), gave Uganda $4.3m (about 8.7b) reward for its tremendous immunisation of children since 1999.
Uganda is said to have improved its immunisation coverage from 54 percent to 81 percent between 1999 and 2002 by immunising over 200,000 extra children. GAVI paid the government $20 for each of these extra-immunised children.
President Yoweri Museveni on June 17, 2002 launched additional vaccines to the immunisation, incorporating the vaccine for acute liver disease and liver cancer to the original six-killer diseases - measles, tetanus whooping cough, diphtheria, tuberculosis and polio.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2004 New Vision. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
