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Samoan government is being accused of ignoring crucial vaccination advice from its own medical experts leading up to the deadly measles outbreak in 2019.
Photo: RNZ / Logan Church
It was an outbreak which killed 83 people in Samoa, most of them babies and young children.
Two consecutive health reports – one a 2018 study and the other a commission of inquiry delivered early in 2019 – urged the government to conduct a mass vaccination drive, given the country's low herd immunity at the time.
It took the government a further seven months to start rolling out a mass vaccination policy resembling those recommendations, but by then it was too late.
RNZ Pacific's Koroi Hawkins has been following the story and spoke to RNZ's Worldwatch reporter Max Towle.