Day: December 4, 2021

Cameroon has begun a measles vaccination drive on its northern border with Nigeria after several dozen children were found with the infection at a demobilization center. Cameroon says most of those infected are children of former fighters fleeing Boko Haram terrorism.

A mother comforts her 13-month-old baby in Kanuri, a language spoken in Meri, a commercial town on Cameroon’s northern border with Nigeria. The 24-year-old mother says she hopes her child’s life will be saved after inoculation against measles, as promised by vaccination agents deployed to her town.

Prosper Essomba is the Cameroon government’s chief medical officer in Meri. He is supervising a vaccination campaign launched Friday against measles.

Essomba says he first inoculated his 1-year-old son to convince people that vaccination will protect their children from a measles outbreak. He says about 100 vaccination teams have been deployed in all villages around Meri to vaccinate all children with ages from 6 months to 9 years against measles and rubella. Essomba says about 67,000 children are targeted in the weeklong free vaccination campaign.

Essomba said vaccination teams have been sent to the Disarmament and Demobilization center in Meri. He said children of all people fleeing from Boko Haram strongholds on the border with Nigeria should be inoculated.

Yaya Ali, the highest government official in Meri says he asked the government of Cameroon to immediately organize vaccinations when more than a dozen cases of measles were detected in Meri within a week. He says the first measles case was reported in a 4-year-old child at the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Center at Meri. He says it is imperative for everyone to make sure that all children in Meri are protected by receiving the measles, mumps and rubella or MMR vaccine.

Ali said besides vaccinating children against measles and rubella, inoculation teams verify vaccination cards to make sure parents are keeping up with the vaccination schedules of their children. Essomba said it is important to administer all missed vaccine doses as soon as it is feasible.

Cameroon says several dozen measles infections have been reported within the past two weeks in nine other hospitals in Cameroon’s Far North region, where Meri is located. The government says many more people may be infected, since less than 30% of the population visits conventional health facilities.

Cameroon reports that 79 of its 190 district hospitals were affected by measles epidemics in 2020, with about 1,500 confirmed measle infections. The country’s Public Health Ministry says 74% of the confirmed cases were in people who were not vaccinated.

Health officials say when COVID-19 was reported in the central African state in March 2020 parents were afraid to take their children to hospitals for vaccinations since hospitals are also COVID-19 test and treatment centers.

Measles is a disease caused by a highly contagious virus that is spread through the air by breathing, coughing, or sneezing.

However, the World Health Organization says two injections of vaccine can prevent measles. The WHO says the vaccine is safe and effective and has been in use since the 1960s.

Cameroon’s last major measles outbreak was reported from February 2010 to July 2011.

Source: Voice of America

America’s winter wonderland is starting out this season as anything but traditional.

The calendar says December, but for much of the country, temperatures beckon for sandals. Umbrellas, if not arks, are needed in the Pacific Northwest, while snow shovels are gathering cobwebs in the Rockies.

Meteorologists attribute the latest batch of record-shattering weather extremes to a stuck jet stream and the effects of a La Nina weather pattern from cooling waters in the equatorial Pacific.

It’s still fall astronomically, but winter starts December 1 for meteorologists. This year, no one told the weather that.

On Thursday, 65 weather stations across the nation set record high temperature marks for December 2, including Springfield, Missouri, hitting 24 Celsius (75 degrees Fahrenheit) and Roanoke, Virginia, 22 Celsius (72 degrees Fahrenheit). Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Billings, Montana, broke long-time high-temperature records by 6 degrees.

Parts of Canada and Montana have seen their highest December temperatures in recorded history. On Friday, parts of South Carolina and Georgia hit record highs.

In Washington state, Seattle, Bellingham and Quillayute all set 90-day fall records for rainfall. Bellingham was doused by nearly 60 centimeters (nearly 24 inches) of rain. The Olympic and Cascade mountains got hit harder, with more than 127 centimeters (50 inches) in three months, according to the National Weather Service. Forks, Washington, received more rain in 90 days than Las Vegas gets in 13 years.

On top of that, there is a blizzard warning on Hawaii’s Big Island summits with up to 30.5 centimeters (12 inches) of snow expected and wind gusts of more than 161 kilometers per hour (100 miles per hour).

Meantime, snow has gone missing in Colorado. Before this year, the latest first measurable snowfall on record in Denver was November 21, in 1934. There’s a slight possibility of snow Monday night, according to the weather service. Yet, with no snow since April 22, this is the third-longest stretch the city has gone without it.

Stationary stream

One big factor: The jet stream — the river of air that moves weather from west to east on a roller coaster-like path — has just been stuck. That means low pressure on one part of the stream is bringing rain to the Pacific Northwest, while high pressure hovering over about two-thirds of the nation produces dry and warmer weather, said Brian Hurley, a senior meteorologist at the weather service’s Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.

If the jet stream moves more or bends differently, rain and other extreme weather won’t be as concentrated, Hurley said.

This is a typical weather pattern with a natural La Nina weather oscillation, he said. The flip side of El Nino, a La Nina is a cooling of parts of the central Pacific Ocean that changes weather patterns across the globe. La Ninas tend to bring more rain to the Pacific Northwest and make the South drier and warmer.

These bouts of extreme weather happen more frequently as the world warms, said meteorologist Jeff Masters, founder of Weather Underground who now works at Yale Climate Connections.

In Boulder, Colorado, meteorologist Bob Henson enjoyed a rare December bike ride on Thursday.

Still, “there’s a lot of angst about the lack of snow,” he said. “It puts you in a psychic quandary. You enjoy the warm weather while keeping in mind it’s not good for Earth to be warming.”

Source: Voice of America