Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - The Ministry of Health has detected three infections of measles, a mother and her twins, the first such cases recorded in the Kingdom in three years.

"Three measles cases, a mother and her month-old twins, have been diagnosed and confirmed by laboratory tests. It was clear that the mother had not taken the measles vaccine before, but the ministry's probing teams had no known reasons how the infection occurred," said Bassam Hijjawi, the ministry's Primary Health Care Director.

Speaking as he opened a workshop on infection control and national vaccination programme development strategies, Hijjawi said Jordan is an "open society" hosting on its territory refugees and migrants without knowledge whether those families or individuals had been vaccinated against infectious diseases in their home countries.

But he added: "The ministry, under the public health law, is duty-bound to immunize Jordanian children and that all those living on the Kingdom's soil from other nationalities are entitled to free vaccination." He pointed out that the growing number of non-Jordanians is putting additional strains on the national vaccination programme.

Jordan had declared three years ago that it eradicated measles, a very infectious and epidemic illness caused by the rubeola virus whose main symptoms invariably include fever and at least one of the three C's (cough, coryza and conjunctivitis).



*Petra