Health chiefs give up on beating virus by 2020

FALLING vaccination rates have forced European health chiefs to abandon their goal of eliminating measles by 2020.

In 2014 the European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) set the ambitious target of declaring all European countries ‘measlesfree’ by next year – but this now looks impossible.

There were 90,000 cases in Europe in the first half of 2019, more than the total for 2018.

Dr Lucia Pastore Celentano, from the ECDC, said: ‘We have an exceptionally high number of cases of measles and we are very concerned. It is now very unlikely that we will achieve our goal of eliminating measles by 2020 and we are trying to postpone this goal.’

Britain is one of four European countries to have lost their ‘measles-free’ status in the past three years. Dr Pastore Celentano said all European governments must make it their ‘highest priority’ to meet the World Health Organisation’s target of 95 per cent vaccine coverage.

She said: ‘We fully support the Daily Mail’s campaign to encourage people to vaccinate and raise awareness of the danger of these diseases.

‘There has been a loss of confidence in vaccines due to misinformation and a lack of trust. Many parents do not vaccinate because they don’t think measles is severe enough, but it is deadly.’

Last week the World Health Organisation warned that the disease is staging a devastating comeback, killing thousands of children around the globe.

In total there were 364,808 cases reported to the WHO in the first six months of this year – triple the number in 2018.