While there has been a slight decrease in measles’ cases with the weather conditions getting warmer in a couple of days, the highly contagious infection remains a serious public health concern in Karachi as complicated cases continue to be reported at the city’s tertiary care hospitals, it emerged on Saturday.
According to experts, the majority of children being brought to hospitals are unvaccinated and malnourished.
“This month, 80 children have been admitted to the hospital with measles’ complications. Two of them have died. Only today, a three-year-old child has been brought to us from Thatta with post-measles pneumonia,” shared Dr Samreen Zaidi who heads the paediatric section of the Sindh Infectious Disease Hospital and Research Centre (SIDHRC) at Nipa Chowrangi.
The child reported with severe respiratory distress and had to be intubated, she added.
The SIDHRC discharged on Saturday three measles’ patients while as many children are still under treatment. All children are on ventilators. One of them is a one-year-old baby battling for her life for the last 10 days.
“The girl is acutely malnourished. One of her siblings has died of measles,” Dr Zaidi told Dawn, pointing out that malnourished children were more vulnerable to secondary complications such as pneumonia and had a higher mortality risk.
Explaining how the disease gets complicated, she said the initial symptoms of the illness such as fever, cough, runny nose and conjunctivitis were not taken serious and patients reported at hospitals only when complications occurred.
“The patient is highly contagious during the first week of the infection, spreading the illness to nine out of 10 people he or she comes in contact with.”
This year, three children have died of measles at the hospital where 256 cases have so far been reported.
Sources at the National Institute of Child Health (NICH), the largest government-run children hospital in the province, confirmed that a significant number of children affected by measles had been reporting at the health facility for the past many weeks.
