Samoa in lockdown as measles death toll grows
Pacific state faces two-day quarantine but critics say government response has been too little, too late
The South Pacific island state of Samoa faces an unprecedented two-day national quarantine as the government struggles to arrest a catastrophic measles epidemic which has now claimed 60 lives.
From 6am today, the 200,000-strong population will see all public and private services, offices, and businesses closed during two 12-hour daytime curfews.
Road travel will be prohibited to all except emergency, medical-related, or essential utility traffic.
The draconian restrictions come as the administration of prime minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi faces mounting public anger for its failure to prevent what critics insist was an accident waiting to happen.
Figures from the World Health Organisation (WHO) show that in the past five years, levels of vaccination against measles, mumps and rubella have collapsed in Samoa, from a level of 90 per cent to just 31 per cent of eligible infants.
Relations of children who have died in the crisis say Mr Malielegaoi’s government must have known the likely result: a population left wide open to infection.
New Zealand, 3,200 miles southwest of Samoa, has strong ties with the tiny Polynesian country, and since last February has experienced a string of high profile measles outbreaks, leading to alerts throughout the WHO’S Western Pacific region.
“New Zealand warned them in August,” Tupai Molesi Taumaoe, a Samoan community leader whose 20-month-old nephew, Lotolano, died of measles last month, told The Daily
Telegraph. “But they did nothing.” According to official data, New Zealand has seen 2,140 confirmed measles cases this year, including more than 1,700 around the country’s biggest city, Auckland, where many families of Samoan origin are concentrated.
Air New Zealand and other carriers operate daily services from the city to the Samoan capital, Apia.
Sapeer Mayron, a New Zealander who joined the daily Samoan Observer newspaper eight months ago as a reporter, said that south Auckland was well known for low vaccination rates among Samoan families.
“It was obvious to me what was going to happen,” she said.
Since the Samoan crisis began in October, and was later proclaimed a state of emergency, government sources have criticised anti-vaccine campaigners, the purveyors of worthless quack remedies and even bereaved parents for failing to bring their sick children to hospitals in time.
“The community points the finger at the government, and the government points the finger at the parents,” said Mr Taumaoe.
In what has been seen as a belated response, the prime minister made the announcement on Monday that government departments would close for two days.
But just 48 hours later, and following seven more deaths, the full national shutdown that begins today was announced.
In a bulletin yesterday, Samoa’s Ministry of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet reported that, in addition to 60 measles-related deaths, more than 4,000 non-fatal cases of the disease have been notified.
Fifty-two deaths and 2,069 cases have been among children aged four or younger. Of those infected with the disease, 177 are currently being treated as hospital inpatients, the majority of whom are very ill.
Additional intensive care equipment has been flown in and the Samoan government is taking daily deliveries of oxygen from neighbouring American Samoa, such is the scale of the crisis.
“Most of the kids have severe pneumonia, often complicated by multi-resistant bacterial infections,” said Dr Stephen Owens, the clinical leader of a 13-strong emergency medical team that arrived from Britain on Sunday.
“Any one of the children I saw yesterday would have been a child being cared for in a high-dependency unit back at home, or even intensive care,” he said.
“But here, that’s not possible. There’s not enough beds to provide that level of care for every child. So, many of them are being cared for on a general paediatric ward.”
In recent weeks, more than one quarter of the Samoan population has been vaccinated, either with the three-in-one MMR vaccine, or a combined measles-rubella shot. Walk-in clinics, operated by the health ministry, Red Cross, and other agencies, have been stretched to breaking point. From today, their work will be backed by a new door-to-door programme throughout Samoa’s two biggest islands of Savaii and Upolu.
Families needing vaccination are being asked to tie a red cloth or flag in front of their houses as 150 teams fan out across the country.
However, despite the rising level of measles protection, grim forecasts based on current patient numbers predict that the death toll to surpass 70, and it may rise much higher. The Telegraph spoke to a family in which one mother lost three of her children to measles. In another household, two sisters-in-law lost their sons to its complications.
Another woman buried her daughter on Friday and saw her mother succumb the following Monday.
In one fatal case, a boy who was taken to Apia’s central Tupua Tamasese Meaole Hospital, across the street from the ministry of health, for an unrelated medical appointment, later died after he appeared to catch measles while on the premises.
In Apia, hotels are becoming fully booked as aid agency staff and rapid medical response teams fly in from a dozen or more countries.
The outbreak is likely to hit the Samoan economy hard. Already a swathe of cancelled holiday bookings is causing alarm in the hospitality industry.
Samoa will need time to fully recover from the present crisis, even if the bereaved families never do.
‘New Zealand warned the government in August. But they did nothing’
‘There’s not enough beds to give high dependency care to all the children – many are on general wards’