Ho Chi Minh City recorded 3,316 scarlet fever cases suspected of infecting measles in the first three months of 2019, according to the city’s Preventive Medicine Centre. 

Among them, 1,564 patients were hospitalised while the others were treated at home. Last year, 1,693 measles infection cases, including one death, were reported in the southern metropolis, according to the centre. 

The centre attributed the high rise to the increasing number of unvaccinated children in HCM City over the past five years, which amounted to nearly 20,000, making the disease spread in the city and the nation at large. 

The centre also pointed out bottlenecks in the vaccination work, which failed to access children of workers and migrants.

To prevent the disease from further spreading, since December 2018, HCM City has launched a measles-rubella vaccination campaign for children aged from 1-5, under which 253,525 children got vaccines.-VNA