Samoa declared a state of emergency this weekend, closing all schools and cracking down on public gatherings, after several deaths linked to a measles outbreak that has spread across the Pacific islands.
The island state of just 200,000, south of the equator and half way between Hawaii and New Zealand, declared a measles epidemic late in October after the first deaths were reported.
Since then, at least six deaths, mostly infants under the age of two, have been linked to the outbreak, the health ministry said in a statement late last week. Of the 716 suspected cases of measles, 40% required hospitalization.
As of the weekend, vaccination “for members of the public who have not yet received a vaccination injection, is now a mandatory legal requirement”, the government said in a statement. Only about two-thirds of the population has been immunized, according to the health ministry.