Skip to main content

US official says measles next menace to Syrian children

A month after the UN Security Council demanded urgent access to Syrians in need, USAID assistant administrator Nancy Lindborg has told Al-Monitor that the Syrian government continues to hamper aid delivery and to bombard civilians with barrel bombs.
Activist health workers speak to family members before administering polio vaccinations in Aleppo January 5, 2014. In November last year, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said 13 cases had been found in the largely rebel-held province of Deir al-Zor - where polio broke out in 2013. Two more have since been recorded there and the virus has surfaced in Aleppo city and near Damascus, the first outbreak since 1999 in Syria, where civil war has raged since a crackdown on protests in 2011. REUTERS/Hosam Katan

A senior US aid official has warned that the next health crisis facing Syrian children may be measles, as the Syrian government refuses to implement a UN Security Council resolution demanding urgent improvement in humanitarian access to war-battered populations.

In a March 31 interview with Al-Monitor, Nancy Lindborg, assistant administrator for the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), said that the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF have managed to make progress against an outbreak of polio in Syria, but added, “What we are seeing with the coming of warm weather is the possibility of measles outbreaks.”

Access the Middle East news and analysis you can trust

Join our community of Middle East readers to experience all of Al-Monitor, including 24/7 news, analyses, memos, reports and newsletters.

Subscribe

Only $100 per year.