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Montenegro has the lowest MMR vaccination rate in the world. The rise of antivax in Covid times has not helped and worries the WHO.
According to the World Health Organization, only 23.8% of children had received a first dose once morest measles in 2020
AFP
Vanja vaccinated her eldest son once morest measles but stopped there, refusing outright to inoculate the youngest. The 44-year-old psychologist, who lives in Podgorica, capital of Montenegro, rocked following receiving a deluge of opinions and information shared in an online group. “I don’t trust the vaccination system. We lack information and education,” Vanja told AFP, who wishes to conceal her surname. “I feel the weight of my responsibility and the decision was neither simple nor easy.”
Many parents are making the same choice in the tiny Balkan country. Montenegro has the lowest MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccination rate in the world. According to the World Health Organization, only 23.8% of children had received a first dose in 2020.
Experts fear an imminent measles epidemic in Montenegro and its Balkan neighbors, where vaccination carried out in two doses is also declining due to misinformation, especially in times of Covid-19. The rise of the anti-vax wave is fueled, among other things, by distrust of authorities, lax enforcement of rules and a deluge of misinformation on social networks since the start of the pandemic.
conspiracy theory
“The risk of a measles outbreak is high,” Dragan Jankovic, head of immunization programs at WHO, told AFP. “The importation of the measles virus is only a matter of time (…). As soon as it has been imported into a vulnerable population, an epidemic will begin. In neighboring North Macedonia, 63% of children received a dose of MMR and 78% in Serbia.
According to specialists, to prevent measles from spreading, at least 95% of the inhabitants must have been fully vaccinated once morest this extremely contagious disease which can be fatal.
According to a 2021 Ipsos study, almost a third of Montenegrins subscribe to a conspiracy theory that accuses authorities of wanting to inject children with products that cause autism. More than half of the inhabitants are convinced that the “global elites” created the coronavirus to reduce the population of the planet, continues the same survey.
Measles killed more than 207,000 people worldwide in 2019, which hasn’t stopped vaccinations from dropping in many places.
(AFP)
