Rabat – On Monday, Morocco launched a campaign to vaccinate children in schools against measles, known locally as “Bouhamron”, after the escalation of cases in recent months.
Schools began immediately after the school holiday in examining the health notebooks for children to ensure that they obtained the vaccination, and the ministries of national education, primary education, health and social protection circulated a memorandum of education institutions and health directorates in order to organize the process of monitoring and completing vaccination in schools.
According to the memo, which Al -Jazeera Net has a copy of, the ministry decided to exclude the students whose parents refrained from vaccinating them from schools in the event of cases of injury to protect them from the disease while providing the possibility of continuing their studies remotely.
The Ministry of Education decided to close educational institutions that constitute epidemic foci in implementation of precautionary procedures, with recommendations from the departments concerned with the Ministry of Health and Social Protection entrusted to it the task of estimating the degree of the seriousness and urgency of the situation.
These measures come after the outbreak of measles illness in recent months in a number of regions of the Kingdom, and the epidemic appeared for the first time in the Souss -Massa side in October 2023 after monitoring several cases in the same region, informed by the Pediatrics Department at the University Hospital Center in City Agadir, before gradually spread to the neighboring regions in the region of Marrakech Safi, then to the rest of the Kingdom.
Since that date, 25 thousand injuries and 120 deaths have been recorded in this disease, which prompted the authorities to declare a state of alert in various government sectors concerned, and caused concern among the families.
The National Center for Public Health Emergency Operations at the Ministry of Health Understanding 12 regional health emergencies in charge of epidemiological monitoring, and after it worked with the epidemiological monitoring of the disease on launching remedial vaccination campaigns for children who did not receive the necessary doses, and last January expanded the scope of the campaign to include adults.
An educational awareness campaign was launched in the audiovisual media and social media to persuade citizens to vaccinate their children.
On the other hand, the Ministry of Endowments and Islamic Affairs has allocated a unified Friday sermon to urge parents to preserve the health of their children and to pollinate them against deadly diseases.
Disturbing numbers
Measles disease included all age groups, including infants who did not exceed the ninth month, the age at which the child receives the first dose of the vaccine.
According to data presented by the Director of the Directorate of Epidemiology and Control of Diseases at the Ministry of Health, Mohamed Al -Youbi, in a symposium organized by the National Observatory for Child Right The ages of 37 years, 1893 cases are in infants less than 9 months, and 1693 among those who are 9 months and 17 months.
As for deaths, 42% of them were recorded for children under the age of 5, 24% for persons over the age of 37 years, 15% of between 18 and 36 years, 12% between 5 and 11 years, and 7% between 12 and 17 years.
The highest cases of injury were recorded in Tangier -Tetouan Al -Hoceima, then Fez Meknes, followed by the Rabat and Quneitra region, with a lesser degree of Casablanca, Settat, and some regions in the region of Marrakech Safi.
Drug and medicine
Moulay Said Afif, a member of the Scientific Committee for IVF and President of the Moroccan Association for Medical Sciences, explains that measles are a viral disease that is transmitted by air, and the first symptoms appear after a nursery that may extend for two weeks, which is high temperature, cough and red eyes, then the appearance of a red rash in the face The neck extends to the rest of the body, so Moroccans call it “Bouhamron”.
Afif assures Al-Jazeera Net that the danger of measles is that it is an infectious disease, as one person can transmit the infection to about 15-20 people.
Afif believes that vaccination is an effective solution to prevent the disease, and it is given to children through two doses: the first in the ninth month and the second in the 18th month, and it is a free vaccine available in government hospitals for free and the private sector doctors have 50 dirhams (about 5 dollars).
It indicates that most of the deaths (i.e. 98%) were recorded by the unjust, which reflects the importance of the vaccine in protection, according to it.
Anxiety and concerns
As for the pediatrician Said Afif, the numbers announced by the Ministry of Health regarding the injuries of measles disease reveal an epidemic condition that Morocco has not witnessed since 1987.
After this date, the Kingdom recorded a decrease in the number of injuries thanks to the national vaccination program, and the launch of vaccination campaigns in dispensaries and schools, the last of which was in 2013 when 11 million people between the ages of 9 and 18 years were vaccinated, which enabled the achievement of vaccination coverage that exceeded 95% And it is the percentage that any country needs to prevent measles outbreaks in it, and Afif says that Morocco since 2013 has recorded less than ten injuries to the disease annually.
The doctor and researcher in policies and health systems describes Dr. Al -Tayeb Humaidi the situation as “unusual and disturbing”, especially that Morocco was preparing to extract the testimony of measles in coordination with the World Health Organization, after he previously obtained it with regard to malaria and polio patients.
Why?
The Ministry of Health attributed, in a press file on the national campaign against measles, the spread of the disease to the decline in the demand for insemination after the Kofid-19 pandem For the insemination approved by Morocco, which covers a group of infectious and serious diseases, which exacerbated the situation and increased the spread and spread of measles.
For his part, Dr. Saeed Afif warned of the false news that is promoted about the nature of the vaccine, which would harm the country’s health security, and said that the vaccine against measles is safe, successful and free, and Morocco has tested its efficacy in the past decades, thanks to it he achieved collective immunity and recorded the decline in the disease for decades.
He stressed that the national program to prevent the transmission of diseases in Morocco is advanced and protects from 13 patients, and the reason for the decline in the deaths of children less than five years, as it moved from 52 deaths in every thousand neighborhood births in 2000 to 17 deaths in 2022.