Measles plaguing Europe due to fears of vaccine

LONDON — While parts of the world have all but banished measles, Europe is still getting hit with large outbreaks where some people don’t get vaccinated.

Measles is still a bigger problem across parts of Africa and Asia, where outbreaks can be devastating in malnourished children or those with other illnesses like tuberculosis or AIDS.

Most of the 89,000 measles deaths in the world each year are in developing countries.

In Europe, there were more than 21,000 cases of measles and 35 deaths last year, a fourfold increase in cases compared to the previous year. With more than 5,000 cases each, Romania and Italy had the biggest epidemics.

There are many hurdles in stopping the disease’s spread: vaccination coverage, problems with the vaccine supply and poor disease surveillance systems.

Vaccine skepticism remains high in many parts of Europe after past immunization problems.

In France, a national hepatitis B vaccination campaign that was suspended in 1998 amid concerns of bad side effects led to wariness of immunizations.

During the 2009 swine flu pandemic, numerous European critics alleged that the push for swine flu vaccinations was the result of drugmakers’ undue influence on the World Health Organization.

A 2016 global survey of vaccine confidence led by researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found Europe to be the least confident in vaccine safety. Lancet suggesting a link between the combo measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine and autism.

No other studies have found any connection. The paper was retracted, 10 of its co-authors renounced its conclusions, and Wakefield was stripped of his license to practice medicine in the U.K.

After the paper was published, however, vaccination rates dropped in Britain, the U.S. and elsewhere, leading to years of measles epidemics across Europe. In the U.K., at least a dozen medical associations including the Royal College of Physicians have issued statements verifying the safety of the MMR vaccine.

A full dose of the MMR vaccine, a standard component of routine childhood immunization in many countries, is believed to be about 97 percent effective.

Through vaccination programs, measles has been eliminated in the Americas and many other countries have pledged to stop the disease’s spread by 2020.

ALESSANDRA TARANTINO/AP Italy is battling one of its worst epidemics of measles recently, reporting a sixfold increase in cases last year.