Cases of children with measles are increasing in Guinea where the disease accounts for approximately 60% of consultations. Health authorities are sounding the alarm.
Since the beginning of the year, Guinea has seen the number of children suffering from measles increase. Doctor Maurice Tinguiano, head of the pediatric department of the Kankan regional hospital, warns that this highly contagious viral disease which affects children, should benefit from free treatment. Especially in his department where the cases are increasing to the point of worrying the health authorities.
Questioned by guineanews, on measles, which he presents as a “disease known since antiquity, which has already wreaked great havoc in the world”, Doctor Maurice Tinguiano specifies that it is a disease which affects “children aged 0 to 15 and sometimes beyond. It is transmitted through a small microbe also called a virus and manifests itself in particular by fever and the appearance of pimples on the body.
The white coat indicates that “measles, because of its epidemiological nature, is one of the diseases under surveillance and mandatory notification. That is to say that as soon as there is a case, it is imperative to alert the national prevention service”. And to clarify that “the agent that causes this disease, the measles virus, is aerial. It does not contract through the water, nor through the food we eat, but rather through the air we breathe and the secretions that patients emit”.
Referring to the clinical signs, he points out that children with measles have “runny noses. He has red eyes with tears and he coughs a lot. So it is from these secretions, namely runny nose, tears and cough droplets, that the patient emits the viruses, and these viruses circulate in the air and given the promiscuity of the places frequented by many children, especially schools, overcrowded homes etc. the risks of contamination are enormous”.
For almost twenty years, the health authorities of Guinea thought that measles had disappeared, especially since the country had almost no cases between 1985 and 2000. At the time, insists the white coat , “the national immunization program had put in place an apparently effective system. Vaccination was systematic for children and the population was controlled to such an extent that it was believed that measles had been eradicated”.
And Dr. Tinguiano to deplore that “now that this vaccination tends to be abandoned, this is what first explains this upsurge in cases”. However, he insisted on the weight of vaccination which, he said, even if it does not protect 100% either, “limits the damage thanks to the presence of antibodies. And generally this resistance makes it possible to eliminate the virus even if the patient shows signs… But he cannot reach the large organs such as the brain or the lungs”.
To read : “The measles situation is still worrying in Niger”