More than 3000 people have now been infected with the disease and doctors say the death toll is likely to rise.

George Fa'alogo, Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand's (CANZ) humanitarian coordinator, is in close contact with Caritas Samoa.

He says, "We're at a loss to describe the impact of this outbreak, especially for those families who have lost more than one child.'

He said CANZ would continue to support Caritas Samoa so they may continue their outreach work in these communities.

Caritas Samoa has been collecting supplies such as food, clothing, hand sanitiser, bed sheets, pillows, towels and medical face masks for hospitals, clinics and families.

They are also mobilising volunteers to put together family packages of these supplies that patients and their families can pick up from donation stations outside of hospitals and clinics.

Samoa declared a state of emergency on November 15 and a mass vaccination campaign was activated soon after.

The government has announced its intention to make immunisation compulsory.

Schools have been closed, and children under the age of 17 have been banned from public gatherings.

On Saturday the streets of Apia were virtually empty.

Many in the community are tracing the current epidemic back to the deaths of two babies on July 6 last year.

At Tuasivi hospital, two nurses had mixed the wrong liquid with MMR vaccines.

The deaths provoked widespread fear and confusion among parents - and a great deal of mistrust of vaccinations.

Temporary clinics have been set up across the country to provide vaccinations and to treat people who are showing symptoms of measles.

Almost 45,000 people have now received the measles vaccine.

Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand, together with Caritas Australia and Catholic Relief Services, are sending a solidarity grant to Caritas Samoa to assist them in their work.

The funding will help in the collection and distribution of essential supplies.

It will also provide transportation for medical professionals and mobile clinics to vaccinate people in rural areas.

You can support Caritas' relief efforts for emergencies such as this by donating to their Pacific Relief Fund on our website:

Source

• Supplied: Amanda Gregan
  Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand
• tvnz.co.nz
• stuff.co.nz
• rnz.co.nz
• Image: stuff.co.nz

Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has announced support for the memorial and the refurbishment of the nurses' training centre to mark the centenary of the arrival of a ship from New Zealand which was carrying sick passengers.

"One hundred years ago the New Zealand passenger ship Talune arrived in Apia, with flu infected passengers on board. The consequences of that arrival were devastating," Peters said.

"We acknowledge that almost all Samoan families were impacted in some way by the epidemic and we respectfully join with Samoa to mark the centenary today as National Health Day."

On 7 November 1918, the New Zealand passenger and cargo ship Talune arrived at Apia from Auckland.

On board were people suffering from pneumonic influenza, a highly infectious disease already responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths around the world.

Although the Talune had been quarantined in Fiji, the New Zealand administration in Samoa allowed sick passengers to disembark with no quarantine checks.

The disease spread rapidly, killing an estimated 20 percent of the population - at least 8,500 people - in less than two months.

In New Zealand, the number who died was 8573.

According to a 1947 United Nations report, the epidemic in Samoa ranked as one of the most disastrous epidemics recorded anywhere in the world during the 20th century, so far as the proportion of deaths to the population is concerned.

The commemoration was marked with a public holiday, church service and ceremony at the mass grave at Vaimea, one of the dozens of mass graves that dot the country.

The New Zealand High Commissioner to Samoa represented the government at commemoration services in Apia.

Source

• tvnz.co.nz
• radionz.co.nz
• scoop.co.nz
• radionz.co.nz
• nzhistory.govt.nz
• Image:en.wikipedia.org

The Office of Catholic Education Service, closed the schools last Friday and it was expected that they would remain closed on Monday.

The closure encompasses a high school, three elementary schools and two kindergartens, with more than 700 total students enrolled.

"The pink eye epidemic is moving quickly, affecting several of our students and teachers," said Eddie Brown, the Catholic school system's director.

The outbreak also prompted the closure of 28 government schools from preschool through high school, plus special education programs, and smaller private schools.They will not reopen until Wednesday.

Close to 2,300 students and 130 teachers have pink eye, said Salu Hunkin-Finau, director of the territory's Education Department. About 13,000 children are enrolled in public schools in American Samoa.

Source

• The New Zealand Herald
• Image: Your eyedoctors.com

If we fail to understand and take care of the natural world, it can cause a breakdown of these systems and come back to haunt us in ways we know little about. A critical example is a developing model of infectious disease that shows that most epidemics — AIDS, Ebola, West Nile, SARS, Lyme disease and hundreds more that have occurred over the last several decades — don't just happen. They are a result of things people do to nature.

Disease, it turns out, is largely an environmental issue. Sixty percent of emerging infectious diseases that affect humans are zoonotic — they originate in animals. And more than two-thirds of those originate in wildlife.

Teams of veterinarians and conservation biologists are in the midst of a global effort with medical doctors and epidemiologists to understand the "ecology of disease." It is part of a project called Predict, which is financed by the United States Agency for International Development. Experts are trying to figure out, based on how people alter the landscape — with a new farm or road, for example — where the next diseases are likely to spill over into humans and how to spot them when they do emerge, before they can spread. They are gathering blood, saliva and other samples from high-risk wildlife species to create a library of viruses so that if one does infect humans, it can be more quickly identified. And they are studying ways of managing forests, wildlife and livestock to prevent diseases from leaving the woods and becoming the next pandemic.

It isn't only a public health issue, but an economic one. The World Bank has estimated that a severe influenza pandemic, for example, could cost the world economy $3 trillion. Read more

Sources

• The New York Times Sunday Review
• Image: Ohio State University