KARACHI: Expressing serious concern over growing numbers of measles’ cases these days, especially in Karachi, health experts at an event held on Tuesday urged parents to get their children protected against the highly contagious and potentially fatal viral infection — which has claimed at least 57 lives this year so far, while affecting over 4,200 (confirmed cases) others in 73 outbreaks across the province.
They were speaking at a media briefing jointly organised by Directorate of Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) with Unicef in connection with the upcoming 12-day Measles-Rubella (MR) and OPV (oral polio vaccine) immunisation campaign starting from Nov 19. It targets 8.2m children for MR vaccination and 8.4m for OPV.
According to experts, Pakistan has seen the second highest number of measles’ cases after Yemen in the world this year — over 12,000 cases with 125 deaths — and the situation is projected to go worse, if no intervention was made.
“We believe getting protection against vaccine-preventable diseases is every child’s basic right and the government is doing its best to ensure that. Unfortunately, what we are missing is parents’ cooperation. It’s criminal (negligence) on their behalf to miss routine immunisation doses for their children,” Dr Khalid Shafi representing Pakistan Paediatric Association (PPA) said, adding that the drive would have a direct impact on children’s health status if parents showed support.
Experts urge parents to innoculate children against contagious infection
According to him, measles not only involves a high risk of complications, including pneumonia, but also poses a continued risk to life even after child’s recovery.
“Years after apparent recovery, measles can cause brain swelling, seizures, lifelong neurological damage or even death. This complication is rare but we have seen numerous such cases in our practice,” he said.
He described a single case of measles in a community as a shame given the fact a 100 per cent effective vaccine was available for free against the infection.
National Immunisation Adviser Dr Ali Murtaza, who is also associated with the National Institute of Child Health, where currently two children with measles are on ventilator, emphasised the need to focus on measles.
“Perhaps, what could wake up parents is to show them the condition of children being treated in our intensive care units,” he said. Tracing the background of the immunisation programme, Dr Sohair Raza Sheikh, Additional Project Director, EPI, Sindh, said that it was established in 1978 and grew over the years, today covering vaccination against 12 infections.
“We have a robust mechanism with trained teams, covering 1,190 union councils across the province. We have increased immunisation coverage of zero dose children from 76 per cent to 81 per cent identified over the last four drives,” he said.
A third-party evaluation, he pointed out, had showed that routine immunisation programme had made significant progress over the past few years; for instance, there has been a 60 per cent decline in measles outbreaks while mortalities have dropped from 132 in 2024 to 57 this year.
“Over 557,000 children who missed their doses during the pandemic have been identified and vaccinated during the big-catch rounds for which the age-bar was enhanced from two years to five years,” the EPI official said, adding that neonatal tetanus had been eliminated.
He also talked about how the whole system was being upgraded, which included provision of different facilities to the field staff to increase efficiency, hiring of over 900 vaccinators and mapping the cold chain.
Child immunisation, he said, was mandatory and any refusal or obstruction was a punishable offense under Section 9 of the Sindh Immunisation and Epidemics Control Act 2023.
WHO representative Dr Ramesh Kumar explained that rubella was the leading vaccine-preventable cause of birth defects, stressing that protection against the viral infection was important.
“In the upcoming drive, 8.2m children aged six to 59 months (five years) across all 30 districts will be targeted,” he said, adding that young children were also falling victims to measles due to which the age-bar had reduced to six months.
About the polio status, he said there had been nine cases in Sindh so far out of the 30 reported in the country. He regretted that only 70 percent parents get their children vaccinated in routine immunisation, leaving 30 percent children unprotected.
The experts emphasised that no new vaccine was being introduced and that these vaccines were effective, safe and already part of the routine immunisation efforts.
Dr Arslan Memon of EPI-Sindh, Dr Zaid bin Arif, of Unicef, and federal EPI representative Dr Saadullah Chachar also spoke.
Published in Dawn, October 29th, 2025.