Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) emergency teams have vaccinated almost 10,000 children in the Gadzi area, of the Central African Republic, about 300 kilometres west of Bangui, after the appearance of several cases of measles led the local authorities to raise the alarm. The vaccination teams had to cope with major access problems due to the poor state of the roads and the dispersion of the population in the area, where more than 70,000 people live with virtually no basic healthcare.
After two weeks of the campaign, a total of 9,717 children were vaccinated. Some 9,000 children between six months and five years old received measles immunisation. Of these, nearly a thousand were also vaccinated against pneumococcal disease. Pneumococcus is a bacterium responsible for various infections, especially respiratory ones. Additionally, about 700 babies under six months were vaccinated just against pneumococcus disease.
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