After vaccination rates dipped for years, UK sees a measles outbreak

Some point to lack of access for uptick in trend

LONDON — The 5-year-old looked nervously at her older brothers, scanning their faces for any sign of distress as needles were swiftly stuck into their upper arms, the syringe plungers pushed in and the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine administered. Whether it was for her benefit or not, they barely flinched.

Then it was her turn. The girl, Oma Nnagbo, looked wideeyed at the cheerful nurse who a moment later declared, “All done, very brave!”

Michael Nnagbo, 40, had brought his three children to this pop-up vaccine clinic in Wolverhampton in England’s West Midlands after receiving a notice from their school about a measles outbreak in the nearby Birmingham area.

“It’s what we have to do, and it’s important to do,” Nnagbo said. “I just want them to be safe. And it was easy, you could just walk in.”

Cases of measles, a highly contagious but easily preventable disease, have begun to crop up in clusters as the number of children getting the combined measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine has declined globally. The trend worsened after the coronavirus pandemic because of a lack of access and hesitancy among some groups. The measles virus can cause serious illness and, in the most extreme cases, death.

Across Europe, measles cases rose more than 40-fold in 2023 compared with a year earlier — from less than 1,000 to more than 40,000 — according to the World Health Organization. And while much of that increase was concentrated in lower-income nations like Kazakhstan, more prosperous nations, where higher vaccination rates had long made cases measles rare, are also experiencing worrying outbreaks.

In Britain, 650 cases of measles were confirmed between Oct. 1 and the end of February, according to the UK Health Security Agency, which declared a national incident in January. The rise in cases was initially driven by an outbreak in the West Midlands, but it has spread elsewhere around the country. Most of the cases in Britain are in children under 10.

Vaccine coverage has waned to precarious rates in some communities, particularly those facing the highest levels of deprivation. That was less the result of a surging anti-vaccine movement, experts said, than a lack of resources, lack of awareness, and some culturally driven hesitancy.

The percentage of children being immunized through the country’s routine vaccination program has fallen over the past decade across all illnesses, including whooping cough, measles, mumps and rubella, polio, meningitis, and diphtheria.

England no longer has the levels of vaccine coverage recommended by the World Health Organization, which advises that more than 95 percent of people must have had two doses of a measles vaccine that contains weakened amounts of the virus to prevent outbreaks.