"In countries with advanced healthcare, the measles vaccine works upwards of 85 percent of the time, according to Patricia Tanifum, a measles expert at the WHO. But in remote corners of the DRC, where the health system and road network have suffered decades of conflict, underfunding and neglect, the virus thrives. Some five million children in the DRC are acutely malnourished, which means the effectiveness of the vaccine is reduced. When vaccinated, malnourished children are less able to devel-op the immunoglobulin against measles, leaving them vulnerable, Sodjinou said. Meanwhile, about 1 percent of rural areas have access to electricity from the national grid, making it hard to deliver and store temperature-sensitive vaccines such as measles that need to be kept between 2 and 8 degrees Celsius (35.6 and 46.4 Fahrenheit). “If not kept in the right range of temperature … it would be correct to compare it to a water injection given to children,” said Philippe Mpabenda, MSF’s head of measles response in Boso Manzi."
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Murray, Lisa, (7 April 2020). "Measles: In Ebola's shadow, a quiet killer is on a rampage in DRC”. Al Jazeera. Archived from the original on 10 May 2020. Retrieved 15 May 2020.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_measles_outbreak_in_the_Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congo
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2019–2020 measles outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
In 2019, a measles epidemic broke out in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The epidemic started in early 2019 in the southeast corner of the DRC and then spread to all provinces. Close to a quarter of a million people have been infected this year alone. The World Health Organization (WHO) says this is the world's largest and fastest-moving epidemic. By June 2019 the epidemic was reported to have exceeded the death toll of the concurrent Ebola epidemic. By April 2020, it had infected mo
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