While much of the world’s attention is on battling the COVID-19 pandemic, which has now reached many countries in Africa, measles continues to silently kill large numbers of mostly children in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Central African Republic (CAR) and Chad. DRC – which has also been fighting an Ebola epidemic – declared a measles outbreak in June 2019. Chad’s measles outbreak has been raging for two years, since May 2018. CAR declared its measles outbreak in January this year.

Together, the outbreaks have infected hundreds of thousands of children and killed thousands more. Some kids die at home, never having reached proper medical care, or having been seen only by a traditional healer.