THE Ministry of Health has located some of the persons who may have been exposed to measles on a flight to Jamaica from England after one of the passengers, a nine-year-old girl, was diagnosed with measles subsequent to her arrival here.

Speaking with the Observer yesterday, Dr Marrion Bullock Ducasse, director of emergency, disaster management and special services, said the ministry is working assiduously to avert any spread of the disease here. However, she did not say how many passengers were contacted or whether any of them contracted the virus.

"A number of them have returned and the parish health departments have the list of persons and they are visiting them because they were direct contact. So we do fever and rash surveillance and immunisation and where they need to be we immunise them," she said. "We are doing two things [to stem a spread of the virus]. We are looking for the contacts of that case as well as we are doing what is called a mop up campaign, meaning that we are looking in our tracking registers and those who have not been inmmunised fully we are finding them, because the more you raise the immunity of the population, if somebody comes with imported measles they [the population] won't get it."

Measles is a very contagious infection that causes a rash all over the body. It is caused by a virus and is spread when an infected person sneezes, coughs, or shares food or drinks with others. The measles virus can travel through the air, therefore, a person can catch measles by simply being near to someone who has the virus even if that person does not cough or sneeze directly on them. Jamaica eradicated measles in 1992 and Dr Bullock-Ducasse said the last imported case was in 1991.

Last Thursday, the ministry revealed that the girl arrived in Kingston from the Gatwick Airport on Virgin Atlantic flight number 69 on May 1. The ministry also declared that it was on high alert because of the highly contagious nature of the virus. At the same time, Dr Bullock-Ducasse told the Observer that the child has fully recovered and her family members have not contracted the virus.

Meanwhile, the ministry continues to urge persons who were on the flight to call the ministry's toll free number 1888-663-5683 for more information or go directly to the medical officer of health or the senior public health nurse at their nearest public health department. The ministry is also appealing to parents and guardians that have children between age one and 18 to ensure that they are fully immunised. In particular, it said children who have never been immunised or had a single dose of the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine must be immunised immediately.