WHO calls for plan against measles
Seven countries recorded 22,000 cases in 2014-15
The World Health Organisation (WHO) in Europe called for measles vaccination campaigns to be stepped up across the region yesterday after recording 22,000 cases of the highly infectious disease since the start of 2014.
Saying she was “taken aback” by high case numbers, Zsuzsanna Jakab, the UN health agency’s European director, said the 22,149 reported cases from seven countries threatened the region’s goal of eliminating measles by the end of 2015.
Even though measles cases fell by 50 per cent from 2013 to 2014, large outbreaks continue in both eastern and western Europe, the WHO said.
Italy has seen 1,674 measles cases since the beginning of last year, while Germany has had 583, Kyrgyzstan 7,477 and Russia more than 3,240.
“We must collectively respond, without further delay, to close immunisation gaps,” Jakab said in a statement. “It is unacceptable that, after the last 50 years’ efforts to make safe and effective vaccines available, measles continues to cost lives, money and time.” Measles is a contagious and sometimes deadly viral disease, which can spread very swiftly among unvaccinated children.
There is no specific treatment and most people recover within a few weeks, but, particularly in poor and malnourished children and people with reduced immunity, measles can cause serious complications including blindness, encephalitis, severe diarrhoea, ear infection and pneumonia.
Spreading fast
A measles outbreak in the US has seen more than 150 people infected, many of them linked to the wave of illness that authorities believe began when an infected person from out of the country visited Disneyland in late December 2014.
Measles was declared eliminated in the US in 2000 after decades of intensive childhood vaccine efforts. But that status was lost after immunisation rates were damaged by an anti-vaccination movement driven in the past decade by now debunked studies suggesting links between vaccines and autism.
In 2014, the US had its highest number of cases in two decades. Nedret Emiroglu, a WHO Europe’s infectious diseases expert, said beating the disease meant pushing vaccination rates to the highest possible levels in every country.