91 suspected measles cases detected in parts of Guj's Mehsana

Mehsana: A total of 91 suspected cases of measles were detected in parts of Mehsana district in Gujarat during a surveillance carried out in the last one month, a health department official said on Sunday.

Samples of the suspected cases from Molipur village in Vadnagar taluka and part of Kadi town in the district have been sent to a laboratory in Ahmedabad for further testing and a report of the same is awaited, Epidemic Medical Officer of Mehsana district Vinod Patel said.

Attributing resistance to vaccination in the region as a reason behind the likely upsurge in suspected measles cases in the region, Patel said that treatment and preventive measures were being taken.

"Between November and December, 91 suspected cases of measles were found in Molipur and Kadi. We have carried out a vaccination exercise and distributed vitamin A tablets as treatment and preventive measures," Patel told PTI.

He said that additional surveillance was carried out after some suspected cases emerged during the routine surveillance.

"We carried out an active search in the areas where five suspected cases were detected. Vaccination helps prevent the cases. In this region, however, resistance to vaccines is high. Due to Covid-19 pandemic, vaccination against measles slowed down further," he said.

In the affected village, the rate of vaccination remains as low as 60-70 per cent. The authorities are trying to create awareness among locals regarding the benefit of vaccination, Patel said.

The recent spurt in measles cases has emerged as a subject of concern for India, which made remarkable progress in its elimination between 2017 and 2020.

Some states - Maharashtra, Gujarat, Kerala, and Jharkhand - last month reported a surge in measles cases.

The country has adopted the National Strategic Plan for Achieving and Sustaining Measles and Rubella Elimination and has vaccinated over 324 million children between 2017 and 2020 through the MR (Measles-Rubella) vaccination campaign. And despite the challenges caused by the Covid-19 pandemic that overburdened health systems, India made remarkable progress in the elimination of MR.

On the recent spurt, Tarun Bhatnagar, Senior Scientist, ICMR, and National Institute of Epidemiology, said, "The measles outbreak has been seen usually in the places where the routine vaccine coverage has been low. Secondly, during the Covid time, the people migrated from one place to other which is also a reason for this surge."

"We have observed that in general, during the last two-three years - during the Covid time, overall there were problems with the vaccination... Some children may have missed their vaccines somehow due to Covid related disruption of the service. Or, they may have not got the vaccine because they were moving - especially the migrants," the ICMR scientist told IANS.

On the question of whether the measles epidemic is returning to India, Bhatnagar said, "I don't think there is any specific issue with the return of measles or any changes in mutation in the viruses." He said that generally, it is a vaccination coverage issue.