A young boy in Kratie province who fell ill with measles last month has fully recovered, a provincial health official said Monday.
The boy—identified only as a 13-year-old by a World Health Organization (WHO) official—contracted the first case of measles seen in Cambodia since November 2011, according to a statement released last week by the WHO, Ministry of Health and Unicef.
The WHO’s Regional Verification Commission for Measles declared in March that the disease had been eliminated in Cambodia.
“The boy has fully recovered and he has returned to his home,” said Sieng Sivutha, director of the Kratie provincial health department.
Mr. Sivutha added that the Health Ministry was on track to begin an emergency immunization campaign on October 20.
“We plan to give vaccines to children across the province to prevent the measles infection from spreading to other children,” he said.
Shafiqul Hossain, a WHO immunization program technical officer, said Monday that samples from the Kratie case had been sent to the organization’s lab in Hong Kong on Friday to determine its origin.
He added that samples from a separate possible measles case in Kompong Thom province had also been sent to Hong Kong after initial testing in Cambodia produced ambiguous results.
