Pakistan child measles deaths surge in 2012

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Omaha World Herald-AP

By ADIL JAWAD

KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) - Measles cases surged in Pakistan in 2012, and hundreds of children died from the disease, an international health body said Tuesday.

In recent days Pakistani officials said they launched an immunization campaign to reach children in the worst-hit areas. But the country still struggles with a beleaguered health care system, unsanitary conditions in many regions and a lack of education about how to prevent disease. All those factors make it difficult to combat infectious diseases such as measles and polio.

Also, many oppose vaccinations, suspecting they are meant to harm their people.

A spokeswoman for the World Health Organization, Maryam Yunus, said that 306 children died in Pakistan of measles in 2012, compared to 64 the year before.

FULL story at link.


Read more: http://www.omaha.com/article/20130101/LIVEWELL08/301019961#pakistan-child-measles-deaths-surge-in-2012

[Loudly]

1. Yes, health workers administering vaccines are summarily killed by religious extremists.

[Archae]

2. Here in the US...

Children are killed by former Playboy centerfolds.

[JoeyT]

3. They might assume the vaccination workers are CIA agents.

It wouldn't be the first time. That bullshit did immeasurable harm to disease eradication efforts in other countries and gave our anti-vaxxers a flag to wave at the same time. Dumbest. Move. Ever.

Edited to add: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/07/good-job-cia-your-pakistan-vaccine-plot-helped-bring-polio-back-from-the-brink-of-eradication/260059/

[Igel]

4. Not just.

There's a lot of xenophobia.

Think of it as in/out group dynamics on steroids. You distrust those outside your group, only have bad things to say about them; you trust those inside your group, only have good things to say about them.

We do it with sports teams and geographics groups; we do it with ethnicities and races; we do it with class boundaries and education levels; we do it with political parties and even college majors. Same dynamic. As long as it's mild, it's not a problem. When it gets beyond that, you get dysfunctional systems.

Politically you get what Hanna described in Foreign Policy: "Morsi's majoritarian mindset is not anti-democratic per se, but depends upon a distinctive conception of winner-takes-all politics and the denigration of political opposition. Winning elections, by this perspective, entitles the victors to govern unchecked by the concerns of the losers." A Guardian writer paraphrased this as "ambush" style politics. All for the in-group,l and nothing for the subhuman outsiders.

Such are humans. A bit more distrust and you get the Taliban, and religion may be the form it's taking, and the concrete motivations; but the underlying theme is just one of crass tribalism and you got it just as well in the Pak tribal areas decades ago without the religious garb.

[Hekate]

5. That is so sad that public health measures were derailed by suspicion

That said, I wish our home-grown anti-vaccination groups would get a clue by reading about this. Those childhood diseases still kill and maim unless prevented.