Measles Outbreak in Canterbury Sees Vaccination Spree

The Canterbury District Health Board, in New Zealand’s South Island, has confirmed 25 fresh cases of the highly infectious, measles. Authorities say an additional 18,000 doses of measles vaccine will be available in health centres from Wednesday.

Measles is the most highly contagious of all viruses known to mankind. As it continues to spread, health authorities have declared an outbreak and have ordered emergency supplies of vaccines.

Dr Phil Schroeder, GP at Richmond Health, said the number of cases are expected to rise over the days and weeks to come. He said Canterbury has to be ready a massive vaccination programme to overcome the outbreak.

“Unfortunately, it’s an unprecedented vaccination programme for Canterbury that is being entertained here, and probably represents a good quarter of the population. We are talking across the whole region something in the vicinity of 100,000 or thereabouts.”

Dr Schroeder said 5000 vaccines needs to be given every working day of the next six weeks in order to accomplish the target. “So we really do need good vaccine supply and we need it to be consistently good.” He said with measles outbreaks, childhood vaccinations need to be increased but a third of the current cases are in the 29 - 50 age group. “And these people have already received a vaccination but it was slightly less effective than the current MMR vaccination.” Dr Schroeder said their phones are ringing off the hook as people are continuously calling to book in for immunization.

He said the current problem is that they have run out of vaccine supplies and are waiting to stock up.