Brazil on Thursday said that Venezuela is doing nothing to stop the spread of an outbreak of measles in Brazil and neighboring countries that has been sparked by an exodus of Venezuelans fleeing economic collapse.
Since February, four people — three of them Venezuelan — have died of measles in the remote Brazilian border state of Roraima, where health authorities have confirmed 281 cases of the disease, mostly among children.
The outbreak has prompted the Brazilian government to launch a nationwide campaign to vaccinate 11 million children, as well as adults who request it.
Although many Brazilian children are already vaccinated against the disease, the vaccination rate has dropped since Brazil was declared free of measles in 2016.
Brazilian Minister of Health Gilberto Occhi said that Venezuela had ignored Brazilian offers of assistance and vaccines and had not replied to requests for information to assess the extent of the epidemic.
“We need to know what Venezuela’s policy is and what it has done to vaccinate its population, and so do other countries,” Occhi said in a conference call with foreign media.
The Venezuelan Ministry of Popular Power for Communication and Information did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Occhi said that Brazil is considering vaccinating all Venezuelans entering the country — about 2,000 people a day, about half of whom are in transit or on a short-term visit.
Currently, only those that ask to stay as refugees or residents are vaccinated.
Along with Colombia and other neighbors, Brazil has been discussing the need for Venezuela to provide up-to-date information with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), an official said.
“All we have is preliminary data from 2017. They are not updating the information and we can’t see the magnitude of the problem,” Brazilian National Immunization Program Coordinator Carla Domingues said.
PAHO last month said that nearly 2,500 confirmed cases of measles had been reported in the Americas this year, with more than 1,600 of those occurring in Venezuela and nearly 700 in Brazil.
Since Venezuelans fleeing economic and political turmoil started entering Roraima at the only land crossing three years ago, Brazil has vaccinated 45,000 arrivals.
A decree by the Roraima State Government ordering the compulsory blanket vaccination of Venezuelans was struck down by the Brazilian Supreme Court this week.
Measles vaccination in Brazil fell to about 70 percent coverage last year, a health ministry official said.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America. Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a US$600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit. It is also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, said CEO Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RSS