Measles cases increase 30-fold in just a year

THE World Health Organisation has called for an ‘urgent’ vaccination campaign after Europe experienced 30,000 measles cases last year – 30 times higher than the total for 2022.

‘We have seen in the region not only a 30fold increase in measles cases, but also nearly 21,000 hospitalisations and five measles-related deaths. This is concerning,’ said the organisation.

The WHO Europe region counts 53 countries, including Russia and the nations of Central Asia. Forty of these registered measles cases in 2023, it said. Russia and Kazakhstan fared the worst, with 10,000 cases each. In Western Europe, Britain had the most cases with 183.

No cases have been recorded in Ireland yet, according to figures from the HSE.

Vaccination rates against the disease slipped during the Covid-19 pandemic and ‘urgent vaccination efforts are needed to halt transmission and prevent further spread’, the WHO said. Irish experts have warned that the country’s falling vaccination rates are leaving us a ‘sitting duck’.

Dr Yvonne Williams, a GP from Co. Clare, said measles was one of the most infectious viral diseases to affect humans, and that it was difficult to stop a spread once it took hold in a community as it takes up to 12 days for symptoms to show.

‘Vaccination rates have fallen in the UK as they have in Ireland, so at the moment we are sitting ducks, in the sense that we are vulnerable,’ she said recently.

‘There are very few areas in Ireland which have reached our target of 95 or 96% of our kids being vaccinated.’ She noted the high rates of travel between Ireland and the UK were a concern with regard to the spread of measles. ‘Generally what happens in the UK, we often follow suit,’ she said.

Vaccination rates against measles have been dropping across the globe.

Some 1.8million infants in the WHO’s Europe region were not vaccinated against the disease between 2020 and 2022.

In 2022, 83% of children received a first measles vaccine during their first year of life, up from 81% coverage in 2021, but down from 86% before the Covid pandemic, the WHO revealed.