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June 26, 2002

INTERNATIONAL IMMUNIZATION NEWS

"Mass Vaccine Drives Help Push Measles to the Edge"

Deutsche Presse Agentur (www.dpa.de) (06/25/02)

Over 200,000 volunteers were mobilized in a $15 million effort to inoculate at least 95 percent of the 14 million Kenyan children during a recent mass measles vaccination campaign, said to be the largest ever undertaken in Africa.  Traditional World Health Organization immunization goals initially topped out at 80 percent of children under one year old, but after switching to mass immunization programs in seven southern African nations, the numbers of cases dropped to just 117 two years ago from 60,000 reported in 1996.  Organizers of the Kenyan initiative hope to replicate the program in other nations across the African continent in the coming years with the hope of eradicating the disease entirely by 2010.

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