'60, not 6000': Samoan Govt backtracks on vaccines taken and destroyed

Samoa's Director-General of Health has backtracked on the number of vaccines taken and destroyed in the midst of a measles epidemic.

On Monday, Dr Take Naseri said 6000 measles vaccines had been taken without official authorisation from a hospital and administered for a fee at unregistered clinics.

"I don't know how they are getting it. So it has come from something that is not proper. So there is an investigation going on," he says.

After the vaccines were seized, they subsequently needed to be destroyed as they hadn't been kept in proper chilled storage.

But according to the Samoan Government, Dr Take Naseri made a "slip of tongue" at a press conference yesterday, and the correct number of vaccines taken and destroyed was 60.

"[He] was only informed late last night by staff that the vaccination doses seized include six vials with ten doses each," the government said in a statement.

"All the seized vials have since been destroyed because their safety has been compromised due to storage issues."

Since the start of the Samoa Mass Vaccination Campaign on November 20, 24,000 individuals have been vaccinated. The population of the island nation is just under 200,000.

On Tuesday, the Government of Samoa released its latest update on the measles outbreak, announcing that there had been 32 "measles-related deaths" to date. The majority of these (15) were children aged between one and four years old. Seven of the deaths were children aged between six months and 11 months.

Kiwi support teams on the island have been working around the clock to help administer vaccines to prevent illness and care for those already critically unwell.

"These hospitals are not designed to deal with this. The minute you get hospitals running at 200 to 300 percent capacity - I think it speaks for itself. It's incredibly serious," New Zealand medical assistance team member Dr Scott Wilson told Newshub on Monday.

"There have been a few tears. We have admitted at times multiple members of the same family. At one point we had five members of the same family in here."