Pakistan: Two children die in Charsadda from measles vaccine

The Express Tribune

One month after being administered the measles vaccine, two children in Charsadda died on Sunday , Express News reported.

Faizan and Sabeen, who were both four years old, were injected with the measles vaccine on May 3 after which their condition became critical and they had been taken to the district hospital in Charsadda. The two children died today.

An investigation committee has been formed to look into the matter.

Who’s at fault?

The government launched a 12-day measles campaign on May 19 and since then several cases of negative reactions to the vaccine are surfacing. Around 110 adverse reactions have been recorded by the health department so far.

According to investigations, 40% of the anti-measles vaccine staff is untrained and lack sufficient knowledge about the technicalities of administering measles vaccine.

But a medical specialist in Tehsil Headquarters Hospital Shabqadar earlier told The Express Tribune on the condition of anonymity that the deaths were caused by the vaccine and not due to untrained staff.

He claimed the medicine lost its efficacy due to prolonged outages in the hospitals.

According to the specialist, the hospitals where the vaccines are being stored face almost 20 hours of outages. “The cold chain for all vaccines needs to be maintained; since the hospitals face outages the quality of medicine is affected,” he added.