Samoa charges anti-vaxxer with incitement as country battles deadly measles outbreak

Samoan authorities have charged an alleged anti-vaxxer with incitement against the government, as the Pacific nation remains in a national shut-down over a measles outbreak which has killed more than 60 people. Key points: Measles has killed 63 Samoans at the last count, most of them children The anti-vaxxer's public claims were reported to the Samoan Attorney General Measles cases are up three-fold compared to the same time last year, the WHO says The shut-down is facilitating a mobile vaccination service, where citizens have been asked to place a red flag at the front of their homes to signal to roving vaccinators that someone requires immunisation. In Samoa, Clarke said mistrust of official vaccination programs became a "really big issue" when two children died after nurses administered them with incorrect measles immunisation drugs. In figures described by its director general as "an outrage", the WHO said most of last year's measles deaths were in children under five years old who had not been vaccinated. "The fact that any child dies from a vaccine-preventable disease like measles is frankly an outrage and a collective failure to protect the world's most vulnerable children," said the WHO's director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.