A mass vaccination campaign is underway in the tiny South Pacific nation of Samoa as the government tries to stop a measles epidemic that has claimed the lives of more than 60 people, mostly children, since mid-October.

All public buildings and businesses have closed for 48 hours to allow medical teams and volunteers to conduct door-to-door visits, and families have been urged to tie red flags or fabric outside their homes to indicate that they need to be vaccinated.

Medical teams from New Zealand are assisting with the vaccination program in Samoa and intensive care specialist Dr. Chris Poynter says that children are dying in front of their families almost every day. One family has lost three children to the outbreak, and Elsie Lolesio – who lost her one-year-old daughter Noel – says the dreams for their little ones have been lost. "We don't know what to do and we don't know how to accept it."

The United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, has supplied Samoa with 160,000 vaccinations in the hope that the entire population of around 200,000 can be immunized as soon as possible.

"UNICEF supports the mass vaccination campaign underway in Samoa," says UNICEF Executive Director Vivien Maidaborn. "It is the key strategy to quickly bring this epidemic to an end. And also it's the key strategy to preventing any further infection."

Measles is more contagious than the deadly Ebola virus and medical experts believe that the Samoan epidemic was sparked by a visitor from New Zealand which had a similar measles epidemic earlier this year. Computer models predict that 2-3 percent of the population – up to 7,000 people – will be infected and the death toll is expected to top 70 before the outbreak is contained.

New Zealand vaccinologist Dr. Helen Petousis-Harris says the Samoan epidemic can be blamed on low immunization rates of between 30-40 percent. "This low immunization coverage has left Samoa extremely vulnerable to measles – a lit match to dry tinder and gasoline. With the global resurgence of measles, the risk of an importation to this vulnerable community was almost inevitable."

The WHO says that measles remains an important cause of death among young children globally despite the availability of a safe and effective vaccine and it blames a deep mistrust of vaccines and lack of access to healthcare for a 300-percent jump in global measles cases in the first three months of 2019.

The worst hit country is the Democratic Republic of Congo where more than 230,000 people have been infected and almost 5,000 people have died this year alone. Over the same period, Brazil recorded 50,000 cases, the Philippines 44,000 and the United States reported 1,200 cases across 31 states.

Read more: Samoa Measles Emergency