The sheer volume of patients presenting to Samoa’s dedicated measles emergency department was like nothing veteran paediatric nurse Dominic Sertori had ever experienced.

“There was just continuously very, very acutely unwell, mostly children coming in every shift,” Mr Sertori said. “One day were had more than 170 patients ... over 90 per cent were children.”

Australian Medical Assistance Teams in Samoa to support local efforts to combat a devastating measles outbreak. Credit:DFAT

The nurse unit manager from the Children’s Hospital Westmead emergency department was deployed for two weeks to the Pacific island nation amid a devastating measles epidemic that has so far killed 62 people.

The vast majority of deaths are children, including 26 under one-year-olds and 28 one to four-year-olds and the mortality rate is expected to rise due to low vaccination rates, particularly among Samoa's youth.