Transcript
The head of Public health in Samoa, Dr Robert Thomsen, says both the baby and adult were being treated in Apia's hospital for respiratory complications thought to be from the measles virus.
He says the numbers of people presenting with measles symptoms is still rising rapidly with 314 suspected measles cases (15 of which have laboratory confirmation) - most of these people are children less than four-years-old.
Dr Thomsen says Samoa is waiting for an Australian laboratory to definitively link the three deaths to the virus.
"At this stage we're just pushing for the immunisation of children especially those below the age of four years. We have a big gap in our immunisation programme especially when the measles incident last year that cost the lives of two children. And that had affected our immunisation coverage."
He says the government is pushing for all children aged four and under to be immunised immediately, and has lowered the eligible age to receive the first dose of MMR to six months of age.
Dr Helen Petousis-Harris, an immunology and vaccine specialist from the University of Auckland, says there were many unfortunate mistakes made throughout the health system on the fateful day in 2018 when the two children seeking vaccine protection died.
HPH: "What happened was rather than being reconstituted with the water, it was reconstituted with a drug and then administered."
JM: "And what drug was that?"
HPH: "It was an anaesthetic."
JM: "Ok, i've heard that it was a muscles relaxant?"
HPH: "Yes, yes that's right."
JM: "What would that do?"
HPH: "Well, given the dose, um it stopped the ah, the heart."
JM: "So"
HPH: "So, that's what happened. And that's why it was very quick. And because it was a multi-dose vial, the same vial was used again for the second child."
JM: "Even though the first child had already died?"
HPH: "Correct."
She says there are two really key things that need to happen in a situation like this.
"One of those is to quarantine people. who may have been a contact of the case. If you're not sure about their immune status. So for example if someone's come into contact with a case and they're not immune, they've not been vaccinated, then they need to be quarantined. That would be a fairly standard practice. And the other thing is to implement a mass vaccination campaign, to, aimed to vaccinate as many people as you possibly can."
Dr Thomsen says the government is vaccinating 300 -400 people a day now and has closed all creches, day care facilities and early childhood centres in a move to protect preschoolers.
Correspondent Tipi Autagavaia says the adult was a man but the gender of the infant is unknown with both being treated in Apia's hospital when they passed away over recent days.
He says the Health Minister Take Naseri is still in meetings with clinicians about how best to respond to the outbreak's virulence but for now all pre-schools have been closed to protect under fives from the highly contagious virus.
He says a decision is now pending on total nationwide school closures but it's a balance.
"Because next month will be the National Exams for the Year 8, Year 12 and Year 13, they're looking at continue on having these students going to school until after their examination is done next month, and that will be it. And then there will be another decision for them to stay home until the end of the year."
Tipi Autagavaia says Samoans are flocking to the hospitals and clinics to get immunised now and the public throughout Samoa is on high alert for the virus.
Dr Thomsen says its harder to get people to stay home and quarantine themselves when they get sick but people are now starting to realise how contagious and deadly measles can be.
He says as of yesterday the paediatric ward had 34 measles admissions.
"I was informed yesterday that out of that 34, five were critical, otherwise the rest were stable. And these are all children less than, less than two years of age.But that's just the critical ones. I haven't got the numbers for today yet."
JM: "And what about adults? You've got 34 paediatric admissions and how many adults."
RT: "At the moment there's only two that we have on our system. Not so much of the adults, its more the children."
Dr Thomsen says there have been three pregnant women admitted with measles related illness and two of those are now discharged, with news of the well-being of the third woman and her baby's condition currently being monitored closely.
Dr Petousis-Harris says its absolutely vital people who haven't been immunised get the first dose of the MMR vaccine as quickly as possible.
She says the vaccine offers immune protection from one day prior to exposure to the measles virus and to a lesser extent even after exposure.
She says measles is the most highly contagious virulent disease known to man and in an unimmunised population the infection goes viral.
"A singe case can infect on average a further 12 to 18 others. And so on and so on. So it virtually explodes. And the only way to prevent that is to have at least 95 percent of your population immune to stop it from spreading. That's what you need to achieve to stop it spreading. So it's extremely infectious. And airborne."
She says the historical legacy with New Zealand and Samoa around the influenza epidemic in 1918 that wiped around 22 per cent of the Samoan population after being brought in on a ship failed to adequately quarantine sick New Zealanders and 8500 people died.
"I feel deeply ashamed and incredibly angry that this has happened. Because it was absolutely predictable. It was inevitable. That we would export this to Samoa. The situation in Samoa is well known, that they have very low levels of immunity there. So yeah it was literally inevitable. Really disappointing."
Asked where the blame lies, Dr Petousis-Harris responded.
"Ultimately we need to look to our leaders. And I don't think this is something that we can sort of look at the current, the current leadership, or the one before... We've known about these problems for 20 years. so you know, where are you going to place the buck? We've had 20 years to do something about this. This is something we could have done a lot better on."
She says news of the three deaths in Samoa from measles complications is only the start of this epidemic.
"And and what's terrifying is that, this is just the beginning of the epidemic in Samoa."
Dr Thomsen says Samoa has asked New Zealand for medical supplies and also for nurses who are competent to vaccinate, have experience caring for children and who can volunteer their time.
He says this is being arranged through the Ministries of Health as they do not want a repeat of masses of random people trying to help without overall coordination.
New Zealand Associate Minister of Health, Julie Anne Genter says the first consignment of supplies will arrive in Samoa on Saturday and the government continues to offer further advice and practical assistance, remaining ready to help in any way.
