MOGADISHU, Somalia — Hawa Nor carries her visibly weakened son into the hospital’s isolation ward. Like many sick children here, the 7-year-old boy is probably a victim of an old Somali wives’ tale: A child with measles should be kept inside, away from the doctor, for a week.
Abdullahi Hassan labors to breathe, and his eyesight is deteriorating.
“Even though we kept him at home for a week, he’s getting weaker,” Nor tells the pediatrician.
Somalia is suffering from an outbreak of measles that the World Health Organization and the U.N. children’s agency labels “extremely alarming.”
UNICEF reported 1,350 suspected cases of measles in March and April, a figure four times higher than the same period last year. Another 1,000 cases were reported in May.
Many children in the country are malnourished, and few have access to medical care, making an outbreak potentially dangerous for thousands of others. One additional danger that prevents early medical intervention is the belief by many parents that they should keep measles-infected children at home for a week for what they call an “incubation” period.
“Such delays cause clinical problems, including respiratory disorders, and in some cases they bring children malnourished who cannot survive without ventilation,” Dr. Omar Abdi, a pediatrician at Banadir Hospital in Mogadishu, said.
Although mostly eradicated in the United States, measles remains a common disease in many parts of Asia, the Pacific and Africa because of a lack of vaccinations.
Even the U.S. has seen a record number of measles cases this year, spreading in a handful of communities where pockets of unvaccinated people are found, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The country has nearly 400 reported cases, more than twice as many as in all of 2013 and eight times as many as in all of 2012, according to CDC.
The World Health Organization says about 330 people, mostly children, die from measles every day globally. The Philippines is suffering from a severe outbreak this year. WHO says the country has about 40,000 cases.
