‘Wake-up call’: Measles cases doubled in Europe last year, say WHO and Unicef | Vaccines and immunisation

Measles have multiplied last year in the European region, and climbed to the highest level in nearly three decades, after the Covid-19 pandemic caused a delay in routine vaccination and rampant wrong information, Global Health Organization UNICEF said.

Joint analysis Posted on Thursday He said 127,350 measles, which led to at least 38 deaths, last year throughout the region, which includes 53 countries in Europe and Central Asia. In the vast majority of cases, the injured were not vaccinated or had an unknown vaccination.

“The measles are back, and it is an invitation to wake up,” said Hans Henry B -Klog, Regional Director of Europe. In a statement. “Without high vaccination rates, there is no health security.”

Last year, the region was home to a third of its reported measles in the world. It was the highest number in Romania, in 30,692, followed by Russia and Kazakhstan.

Throughout the United Kingdom, 2,900 cases were reported last year. After Romania, Italy reported the second largest number of cases in the European Union, in 1057, followed by 647 in Germany, 555 in Austria and 531 in Belgium.

Fatima čgić, President of UNICEF, head of immunization for the region, said Europe And Central Asia. With the health of children steadily improved throughout the region, officials have turned into a focus to how to ensure the prosperity of all children in the region. Now they were struggling with how to treat one of the most infectious diseases in the world. “We were talking about prosperity. Now suddenly we have to go back to survive.

All over Europe, more than 50,000 measles – which can lead to complications such as pneumonia, brain swelling and blindness – children under the age of five. About 60 % of all people who were patient in the hospital.

Health officials have linked the high number of cases to the fact that at many vaccination rates, they have not yet returned to prenatal levels. Instead, vaccination levels were delayed; Between 2019 and 2023, the number of children receiving the first dose of vaccination decreased by 10 %. In 2023, half a million qualified children missed the dose of the first of the measles vaccine.

In some cases, this was linked to the health care systems that were burdened with the burden during the epidemic, which led to disturbances in routine vaccines, said čgić. “So we were calling on governments to take the knees – to find all children who did not get vaccination and make sure they are vaccinated.”

Another factor was the rotating lies on the vaccines. “It seems that Covid-19 has shown a lot of wrong information, especially in Covid-19, but then there was an indirect effect on routine fortification,” she said.

“We need to make sure that parents understand that they need to look at reliable sources.” “You can not only do a Google search for vaccination. That’s not how it works.”

The wrong information apparently continued even with the end of the epidemic. In Romania, where measles increased beyond 30,000 last year, three political parties entered Parliament in the last elections adopted the anti -vaccination accounts, the European Policy Analysis Center He said in a report He noticed the increasing threat of “medical populism”.

Between 2013 and 2023, the percentage of Romania population with the first dose of the measles vaccine decreased from 92 % to 78 %, and data from the World Health Organization and UNICEF – much lower than the 95 % coverage rate required to keep the herd immunity.

On Thursday, the analysis indicated that vaccination rates for the first dose were “very low” in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which in 2023 reported a 55 % coverage rate, and in Montenegro, where coverage was 24 % last year.

European figures follow the death of two people in the US state of Texas – the first of measles in nearly a decade – in the outbreak caused at least 250 people in patients and any health officials They said They expect “to expand quickly”.

In the United States, the outbreak of measles, which is spread through breathing drops that could remain in the air for up to two hours after leaving the affected person, was widely as a test of the new Minister of Health and vaccine critic, Robert F. Reducing The risks of the virus and Vaccines Effectiveness, framing vaccination as a personal option and Recommendation Vitamin A and “Good” feeding.