May 05 2006 at 09:38AM
Mogadishu, Somalia (AP) – A measles outbreak has killed nearly 100 children in the past two weeks in several southern Somali villages, officials said Thursday.
Most of the deaths were along the Shabelle River, Dr Sa’iid Mo’alin Siyad said.
“Children pay the price for war when insecurity cuts them off from access to the most basic health services,” he said.
The death toll was also confirmed by Ibrahim Kulow, a district official in southern Somalia, who spoke to a local Shabelle radio station.
Somalia has one of the highest infant and under-five mortality rates in the world. The country has had no effective government since 1991, when warlords ousted a dictatorship and then turned on each other, carving the nation of an estimated 8,2 million people into a patchwork of fiefdoms.
The measles virus is usually not fatal, but can be deadly in unhealthy or malnourished children with poor immune systems. Symptoms of the disease include rashes, fever and coughing.
Source: AP, May 05, 2006
