Vaccine Stop Epidemics are threatening in Ebola areas

In West Africa, Ebola threatens the spread of other infectious diseases because of the vaccination stop

03/13/2015

The spread of other dangerous infectious diseases is now threatened in the Ebola areas of West Africa. Like researchers in the trade magazine „Science“ According to reports, the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia resulted in the suspension of measles, polio and whooping cough programs. The now threatening disease waves could die far more people than Ebola, the researchers warn. They demand the fastest possible implementation of intensive vaccination campaigns.

In Ebola areas now threatens measles epidemic
Saki Takahashi of the Princeton University in New Jersey and his team report that there are frequent cases of war, natural disasters or political unrest over the measles epidemics. The reason: Measles are highly contagious. In addition, the vaccination rates are lower than for other infectious diseases, as the children could be vaccinated relatively late, at nine months. Measles are dangerous because of possible complications such as pneumonia and brain and meningitis (meningoencephalitis). In the worst case, the infection is deadly.

In West Africa, some success in controlling measles had already been achieved by the time of the Ebola outbreak in December 2013, the researchers write. Thus, extensive vaccination campaigns had been planned. Ebola, however, forced many health centers to close. In addition, the population would have shunned the facilities for fear of infection, so that it came in many places to vaccine stop.

Measles and other infectious diseases could cause more deaths than Ebola
Takahashi and his team wanted to look more closely at the consequences and calculate how many children in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia have not been vaccinated since the beginning of the epidemic and how many would be likely to get infected if the measles erupted. According to the researchers, at the time of the Ebola outbreak about 778,000 children were not vaccinated against measles, 127,000 children had been infected with the infectious disease at that time.

In their further calculations, the researchers assumed a decrease in vaccination coverage of 75 percent because of the Ebola epidemic. Thereafter, the number of unvaccinated children at the age of nine months to five years per month on average increased by 19.514. In total, the scientists came to 1.1 million children without vaccine protection against measles since the Ebola epidemic. More than 227,000 people could be infected with measles outbreaks, and between 2,000 and 16,000 could die as a result of the disease.

Immunization rates have fallen sharply due to Ebola
For other diseases that can be avoided by vaccination, the researchers suspect a significant decrease in vaccination rates such as polio, whooping cough and tetanus. Also, the supply of HIV or tuberculosis patients and the implementation of malaria control measures are only partially guaranteed by the collapse of health systems.

„These setbacks have the potential to undermine the significant achievements that have been made in controlling these diseases in recent decades“, quotes the news agency „dpa“ the lead scientist Justin Lesser of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. „It can take a long time for health systems in the affected region to recover from this.“ The vaccination campaigns would need to be resumed at short notice to prevent at least a wave of measles.

Rapid and targeted vaccination campaigns could prevent further disaster after Ebola
„Measles cases have been reported in Liberia since January“, With Philips, Health Policy Analyst at MSF Brussels, told the news agency. „As a direct response, vaccination campaigns in the affected regions are already planned for the coming weeks.“ In the next step, implants would have to be closed by further campaigns. It was important to restore the public's confidence in health workers, who suffered massively from the Ebola crisis, said Philips.

„Vaccine-preventable childhood diseases are an area where clear, relatively inexpensive and one-time intervention is possible to minimize Ebola-related health system implications“, the researchers write in the journal. „Coordinated action in the three Ebola-affected countries (and possibly also in neighboring countries) for the children, who are unlikely to have received important routine immunization during the Ebola epidemic of measles and polio vaccines and possibly other life-saving vaccines, could be a second disaster Prevent and help prevent nearly 12,000 deaths from measles alone.“