Madam, - Almost 600 people have died from measles in Nigeria so far this year. Most are children under five. These preventable deaths have occurred mainly in the northern region, where more than 20,000 cases were recorded between January and March by the Nigerian Red Cross and the World Health Organisation.
The epidemic is worsened by fear of the measles vaccine, a fear that is fanned by fundamentalist Islamic clerics who campaigned last year against polio immunisation on the grounds that it was an American plot to sterilise Islamic peoples.
Measles, like polio, can be fatal or cause lasting injury. However, the disease or fear of contracting it do not qualify as grounds for asylum or as reason not to be deported. I would not be happy for my own children to be placed at such risk. I am especially unhappy that deported Irish citizens and their parents are being put at risk. - Yours, etc.,
MEDB RUANE, Royal Terrace West, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.