Measles epidemic looms for tsunami-hit area

Hundreds of thousands of people in tsunami-ravaged Indonesia will need food handouts in the coming months while a measles epidemic looms in the hardest-hit province, aid officials said today.

About 790,000 survivors in Aceh and neighbouring North Sumatra province remain unable to feed themselves and will depend on food rations for many more months, said World Food Programme spokesman Inigo Alvarez.

WFP is “trying to make sure that we are bringing food to the right people and right places,” Alvarez said.

“We’re not interested in creating dependency and that’s why we’re working very hard with our partners to target the people who are really in need of food,” he said. Some 9,300 tons of food had been distributed so far, with some 43,000 tons in storage.

The World Health Organisation also warned today of a potential measles epidemic after reports of outbreaks in refugee camps around the Aceh provincial capital of Banda Aceh, which bore the brunt of the killer tsunami.

WHO spokeswoman Tetra Heitmamp said medical personnel were working to vaccinate as many people as possible against the disease.

“We’ve seen measles among some children in the Banda Aceh area. In some camps, the number of measles cases that we could be seeing is an epidemic,” she said. She did not say how many cases have been reported.

There have been small outbreaks of measles and diarrhoea since the December 26 tsunami swept through Aceh’s coast, leaving more than 120,000 people dead and many more missing.

But rapid intervention has prevented these diseases from turning into full-scale epidemics. Reports of disease have been swiftly investigated and dealt with, minimising the chance of illnesses spreading.