Centre deploys high-level team to Mumbai to manage outbreak of measles

The Union Health Ministry on Wednesday said it has deputed a high-level multi-disciplinary team to Mumbai to take stock of the upsurge of measles cases in the city. The team will assist the state health authorities in instituting public health measures and facilitate operationalisation of requisite control and containment measures, it said.

The three-member central team to Mumbai comprises experts drawn from the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), New Delhi, Lady Hardinge Medical College, New Delhi, and the Regional Office for Health and Family Welfare, Pune, Maharashtra.

The team is headed by Dr Anubhav Srivastava, Deputy Director, Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP), NCDC, the ministry.

The team will also undertake field visits to investigate the outbreak and assist the state health departments in terms of public health measures, management guidelines and protocols to manage the increasing cases of measles being reported in Mumbai, it added.

A civic official in Mumbai said three children were suspected to have died due to measles and 90 others contracted the disease in the city this year.

Mangala Gomare, executive health officer of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), said measles cases were found in wards F-North, H-East, L, M-East and P-South since January. The highest 23 infections were reported from Govandi area, she said.

The three deaths -- two brothers aged 3 years and 5 years and their cousin aged 5 years? were also reported in the same area. A civic doctor told PTI that the BMC has set up a special ward at Kasturba Hospital at Chinchpokli for the treatment of children infected with measles, and some 35 patients were undergoing treatment there.

Of the children infected with measles and rubella, 10 per cent were found to have had incomplete vaccination while 25 per cent had not been vaccinated at all, as per BMC officials. They appealed parents to get children in the 9-16 age group vaccinated against the disease.

"In measles, the child gets fever, cold, cough and red rashes on the body. Complications from this disease can be serious in children who are partially vaccinated or unvaccinated," a BMC release stated.