Thursday 21 November 2019

Measles in the Democratic Republic of Congo

"DR Congo measles: Nearly 5,000 dead in major outbreak", the headline screamed from the BBC website today. "Experts warn there are not enough available vaccines in the country" was the caption under a generic photo of a syringe extracting vaccine from a vial. It's interesting to follow the statistics. On August 17th 2019, www.france24.com reported that "Measles has killed 2758 people in the DR Congo since January". On September 19th, Newsweek reported a figure of 2,074 dead. Clearly, no one has any clear idea as to what the exact figure is so why not round up to the nearest 5,000?

As the BBC article informs us: The Congolese government and the WHO launched an emergency vaccination programme in September that aimed to inoculate more than 800,000 children. Good old WHO, selflessly helping out the African masses and helping to divert attention and government funds away from the real problems of poor sanitation, overcrowding, deficient diet, crumbling infrastructure etc. There's no doubt that measles is killing people, especially children, just as it did in 19th century Britain. The problems back then were exactly the same as in the DR Congo now and, once they were addressed, the death rate from measles plummeted towards zero.

I found another article, on the WHO website, from April of 2011 with the title: DR Congo introduces new vaccine against one of its leading causes of child death. The article continues:
Kinshasa, 4 April 2011 -- In an effort to drastically improve the chances of children reaching their fifth birthday, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) today stepped up its immunisation programme by including vaccines to combat pneumonia. Initially the expanded programme will be in two of the 11 provinces. Pneumonia is one of the biggest killers of children worldwide and is responsible for a quarter of all child deaths under five in DRC. 
DRC First Lady Olive Lembe Kabila and Minister of Health Victor Makwenge Kaput joined parents and health workers in Kinshasa to witness the first child being immunised as part of the official introduction of pneumococcal vaccine into the national routine immunisation programme. 
On the same day in Paris, GAVI founding partner Bill Gates launched a European-wide awareness campaign to highlight the extraordinary life-saving opportunity that vaccines represent for donor countries.
Good old bastard Bill, selflessly promoting "the extraordinary life-saving opportunity that vaccines represent for donor countries" while being coy about the bonanza reaped by pharmaceutical countries. In healthy children, pneumonia is not a killer and it is not even recommended a childhood vaccine in Western countries to my knowledge. The children in the DR Congo are not healthy and vaccinations will compromise their already weakened immune systems even more. There will be no statistics to show how many children were adversely affected by vaccinations because no statistics are being gathered.

GAVI of course is just one of many nefarious fronts for Big Pharma, pretending to work for the welfare of the world's poorest inhabitants. Here is part of its stated mission:
Gavi is an international organisation that was created in 2000 to improve access to new and underused vaccines for children living in the world’s poorest countries. Based in Geneva, Switzerland, Gavi is the Vaccine Alliance, which brings together public and private sectors with the shared goal of creating equal access to vaccines for children, wherever they live.
For "new" read "experimental" and for "underused" read "discontinued in the West". Of course, "DRC First Lady Olive Lembe Kabila and Minister of Health Victor Makwenge Kaput" back in 2011 would have been only too happy to oversee the first pneumococcal vaccination in the country. The occasion makes for a good news story. As children line up to get their shots, it very much looks the Government is doing something positive to fight the frightful death rate amongst young children in the country. 

On the other hand, improving access to clean water, improving sanitation, relieving overcrowding and so on are less newsworthy and nobody benefits but the people. In fact, it diverts much needed money away from the vaccination programs that are touted as the best way to fight infant mortality. 

Anyway, this is the BBC and clearly the main purpose of the article is to remind the BBC readership yet again that measles is a killer and vaccination is the only sure way to combat it. Just to drive home the point, there is a link to video at the end of the article titled "My daughter's life was destroyed by measles". 

This is simply:

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