Twelve medical teams have been deployed by helicopter to remote jungle regions in Sarawak to immunise nomadic tribespeople after 14 died in a measles outbreak, officials said today.

"It is one of the unfortunate things that it is quite difficult to vaccinate them in the jungle but we have to try our best to get as many as possible," Deputy Chief Minister George Chan told the official Bernama news agency.

The measles outbreak has killed 13 children and an adult from a remote tribal community of Penan people in Sungai Urun about 150km inland from the coastal town of Bintulu since Dec 27.

700 Penans affected

The Penan community in the area had never before been exposed to measles, Chan said, adding that the outbreak had not been caused by a new strain of the disease as initially feared.

"With this strain, the on-going vaccination of about 700 Penans in the affected settlements takes only 72 hours to be effective. They will be protected against the disease," he told reporters.

Apart from 35 surviving victims of the illness, whose conditions were improving at the Bintulu Hospital, no new cases had been reported since Monday, he said.